


Somewhere They Can't Find Me

by shewasagaystripper



Category: Queen (Band)
Genre: 1960s, M/M, University
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-11
Updated: 2018-10-12
Packaged: 2019-07-29 15:04:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 84,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16266671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shewasagaystripper/pseuds/shewasagaystripper
Summary: Brian and Roger try to find a way to be together while the entire nation condemns their love





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> Alright dear people, I’ve kept you hanging for a while, but here we go - the new series I promised you I was going to upload! This series, which takes place in 1967, revolve around Roger and Brian being university students who meet and fall in love before the legalisation of homosexuality in 1967 (In case not everybody knows: in the England, homosexual relationships/intercourse/etc. were forbidden between 1533 and 1967, and if you were convicted of one of these ‘crimes,’ you could face a serious time in prison and/or obligatory hormonal therapy (chemical castration) which was said to heal you. The ban on homosexuality was repealed in 1967 (although this only meant homosexuality in ‘private’ was allowed, but you could still be arrested and convicted for showing it in public)).  
> Either way, this series contains six part, of which I will upload one every week on Wednesday (and, if I have to work late in the evening on Wednesday, on Thursday instead). Then of course there is the usual request - if you’re reading this, could you please like it/send me an (anonymous) mail, leave a comment, or let me know in any other way that you’ve read it? Just so that I know what I’m wasting my academic career for ;)  
> Notes and warnings: Nothing shocking happens in this part, but some violence and strong language will come up in later parts.  
> Either way, enjoy yourselves reading this, dears!

‘Thank you for the attention, everyone. Don’t forget the reading for next week and have a nice weekend.’

  
Before the professor got the chance to properly finish his sentence, his nasal voice was already overpowered by the sound of tip-up chairs falling close against the wooden surface they were attached to. School bags stuffed with notebooks and pencil cases were being zipped close, the sound of shoes clattering on the tiled floor, and a door being opened rather violently. Another time, another place, Brian would have felt awkward being the first one to jump out of his chair and rush his way to the door, but he was too much in a hurry to care about the professor’s disapproving grimace today; he had someplace to go to, and he wasn’t going to linger in the classroom for any longer than absolutely necessary.

  
With the strap of his backpack swung around one shoulder rather uncomfortably, Brian made his way out of the hallway before anyone else got the chance to even catch up with him. He rushed down numerous flights of stairs just to avoid running into a multitude of adolescents and thus missing the chance of sneaking away as secretly as he could possibly manage at a public place like college.

  
Brian, finding himself – as expected – being one of the earliest to reach the hallway downstairs, finally allowed himself to slow down his pace and walk through the revolving doors in a normal pace. The weather was remarkably good for mod-October, and Brian, in order not to raise suspicion, calmly followed the tiled pavement of the schoolyard, following the buildings from the corners of his eyes until he eventually spotted the gap between two buildings that served as their meeting place. Brian turned around and studied his surroundings for a while; he wanted to make sure no one would see him and follow him around or something similar to that.

  
Just when he had peered around and determined there was no one around who was paying special attention to him, and thus thought it was safe to slip between the two buildings, Brian heard someone repeatedly calling out his name.

  
‘Brian! Brian, what’s all this hurry about?’

  
Brian turned around to see Sam and Matthew, two classmates he found himself sitting next to a lot during the lectures this year, pacing towards him. He felt a tinge of guilt when he realised that he hadn’t even said a proper goodbye to them after the previous class; he had been in such a hurry to leave the room and go to the place where he had agreed to meet up with someone, that he had totally forgotten the rest of his surroundings.

  
‘You’ve got us all out of breath trying to follow you!’ Matthew said, and Sam tried to give his friend’s statement a bit more power by dramatically wiping his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt, making Brian chuckle at just their talent for acting. If studying astrophysics would not work out for them in the end, Brian would advise them to turn to acting school as a plan B.

  
‘Sorry, guys. I just really wanted to get out of there,’ he said with a shy smile as a means of apology.

  
‘Don’t we all… The first person who can listen to that voice of professor Carter for longer than fifteen minutes without wanting to jump right out of the window I have yet to meet,’ Sam sighed. ‘Anyway, are you coming with us to grab some lunch before observational astrophysics?’

  
Brian’s guilt about having left his friends behind did not exactly subside when he now had to turn them down because of the aforementioned appointment, but he was too absorbed in the prospect of getting to see his soulmate again to feel too bad about having to decline their offer.

  
‘I would love to, but I have an appointment with someone else. I’m sorry,’ Brian said, trying his very best to sound like he was actually feeling bad about turning them down.

  
‘Did you find some better friends?’ Sam snickered with a playful wink, and Brian smiled back at him.

  
‘I’m not gonna turn you in for someone else just like that. I just agreed to meet up with… let’s say he’s an old friend of mine,’ Brian made up in the process of talking.

  
‘Someone we know?’ Matthew asked.

  
‘I don’t think you do. He doesn’t study astronomy,’ Brian said a bit distantly, trying to keep the profile of the one he was describing as general as possible. He at the same time hoped these somewhat evasive answers would help him shake the his classmates off before the person he was waiting on would show up and he’d have to explain the whole situation to everyone involved, which would unnecessarily complicate things.

  
‘Then it’d be fun to meet him during lunch, don’t you think?’ Sam proposed, and Brian had to bite his bottom lip to keep himself from showing too obvious a sign of disapproval towards this plan. This conversation wasn’t exactly going in the right direction; his plan had been – to say it a bit harshly – to get rid of these two as soon as possible, and Sam’s invitation to go out for lunch all together was well-meant but highly inconvenient.

  
‘It would be, but he’s gonna be here in ten minutes, and we only have half an hour of lunch break. I wouldn’t want to waste your time,’ Brian came up with as a pretext. ‘You’d better just go without us, and then we’ll see each other at observational astrophysics, alright?’ Brian proposed, laughing when Sam and Matthew simultaneously made a face when he mentioned the name of the upcoming course. None of them was particularly excited about the horrendous class given by the most boring teacher the school had ever managed to hire, but what Brian cared about most at the moment was that the two seemed to agree with his plan.

  
‘Okay, then we’ll see you in class in half an hour. Are you walking with us or…’ Sam’s voice trailed down while he vaguely gestured at the place where they had come to halt their walking, right in the middle of the school campus – seemingly random to the others, but the exactly spot where Brian needed to be.

  
‘I’ll be staying here. I agreed to meet up with him here,’ Brian said, pointing at the narrow inlet between two of the school buildings, receiving somewhat strange looks from his friends.

  
‘What an odd place to meet someone,’ Sam remarked. ‘What kind of activity do you and this friend of yours engage in? Drug dealing? Pornography? Some other kind of illegal practices?’ he joked, receiving a poke from Matthew.

  
‘In these three years I’ve never seen Brian even doing something as petty as walking on the grass, let alone that he would ever break an actual law,’ Matthew said, to which Brian gave a chuckle, giving the two of them a wave when they parted from him to go get lunch.

  
_Oh guys,_ Brian thought while he watched Sam and Matthew continuing their way down the campus road, _if you’d only knew what was about to go down, you would probably never be able to look at me the same way again._

  
# # #

  
Brian, as soon as he was sure the coast was clear, manoeuvred his slender body between the space of the two school buildings, flashing a quick glance at his watch. It was almost twelve o’clock and he knew it could not take much longer for his friend would arrive at the scene. A cold shiver ran through his spine, and Brian was unsure if it was out of nervousness, or because of the cold – it was surprisingly warm for a mid-October day, but in the space between two buildings, so narrow that Brian doubted whether the sun ever got the opportunity to warm it up, it was rather chilly. Brian closed the buttons of his coat with shaky fingers, hoping his friend wouldn’t walk in on him while he was messing up a task as simple as closing his jacket. He could feel that his heart was starting to beat faster and faster the moment of his arrival approached, and he tried to kill time by endlessly readjusting his unwilling pile of curls and trying to lean against the wall behind him as casually as he could possible manage in the given situation.

  
However, just when he seemed to have found a mildly comfortable position against the cold wall behind him, he felt a hand at his shoulder from out of nowhere, pulling him away from the wall and closer towards him to land the pair of them into a passionate kiss. Brian, his brain clouded by shock, surprise, and the relief and excitement of finally being together with his counterpart again, let him have his way for a moment, until the haze started to fade and he remembered how dangerous this act of public (semi/public, more like) display of affection could be to the both of them. He successfully managed to pull himself away from the grip of the person he could, now that they were between the two of them, safely call his boyfriend instead of simply his friend, and create as much distance between the two of them as he could possibly achieve in the small space they had between the two walls of the school buildings.

  
‘What do you think you’re doing?! We’re at school!’ Brian hissed, feeling his cheeks starting to glow from an odd combination of excitement, embarrassment, and fear he felt towards this sudden and unexpected kiss. Roger, on the other side, was confident as ever; Brian could see in the sparkle in his eyes and the cheeky smile on his face that he had no intent to be subtle, even not while they were in a public environment. And God, Brian could hardly blame him; he knew how much they craved being with each other, how every hour he spent away from his boyfriend was one too much, and how their daily meetings were the moments he looked forwards to all day and dreamt about at night. However, Brian always managed to keep his enthusiasm under his thumb and did everything that was within his power to keep the risk of getting caught as small as possible, something his playful and outgoing boyfriend obviously had more troubles with.

  
‘You’re so cute when you’re blushing,’ Roger chuckled while he leant in to probably attempt to give him a repeat performance of the kiss, but Brian stopped him before he actually got the chance to press their lips together again.

  
‘I’m serious, Roger. Do you even realise how dangerous it is to do this at school?’ Brian asked his boyfriend rhetorically, quickly glancing around to make sure no one had seen them.

  
‘You ought to know I like all things dangerous after these last few months,’ Roger winked, and Brian rolled his eyes, but he turned to his more serious self when Roger mentioned something that caught his attention.

  
‘And by the way, it soon might not be so dangerous anymore,’ Roger said in a promising voice.

  
‘What do you mean?’ Brian asked with a frown.

  
‘Haven’t you heard?’ Roger said, a sparkle of excitement twinkling in his pale blue eyes by now. ‘Parliament is going to discuss the legalisation of homosexuality. What we’re doing might soon not be illegal anymore. Can you imagine how it would be like? To not have to meet in secret anymore, and always have to make sure we’re alone, but to just be together in public, like everybody else? To just be accepted as we are?’ Roger said with such hope in his voice that Brian felt a sting of desire that what he was suggesting might actually come true.

  
‘Really?’ Brian asked, immediately sharing Roger’s enthusiasm.

  
‘I mean, it’s not sure it will happen because there’s lots of opposition in that house full of old, narrow-minded fools…’ Roger sighed, but he soon recovered himself. ‘But there is a chance, and that’s all I need for now,’ he said as he sneaked one more kiss from Brian, who did not bother to protest this time around. The prospect of possibly being seen as lovers instead of criminals somewhere in the near future if the news of them being together was to come out, seemed too good to be true to Brian, and he hoped with all his heart that all Roger was suggesting would come true.

  
‘I missed you today,’ Roger whispered once they had pulled apart from each other again, resting his head on Brian’s shoulder.

  
‘I missed you too,’ Brian agreed, running a hand through Roger’s obviously uncombed blond tresses. ‘How was toxicology, or toxictechnology, or whatever you call it…’ Brian said with a vague wave of his hand, feeling Roger smile against his shoulder before he parted from him and leant back against the wall across from Brian. This was the first time of the day Brian really got to the chance to take a look at his boyfriend after he had been captured with kisses and hugs by Roger, so he seized the opportunity to study him in detail. The pale skin, blue eyes that expressed nothing but the liveliness Brian so adored about Roger, and the ever-lasting hint of a smile at the corner of his light pink lips, was all Brian needed to see to make his day. His oversized patched-up denim jacket left a strip of fabric from the striped shirt he wore underneath it visible, and his tight black jeans finished were a perfect finish for the outfit. Brian suddenly felt awkward in his own blue shirt and dark grey trousers; Roger always looked so effortlessly fashionable, while he had to go through his entire wardrobe closet each morning to find an outfit that made him look somewhat presentable to the world, only to feel like a fashion disaster whenever he was faced with his partner’s much better taste in clothes.

  
‘Toxicology. It was alright, I guess. I just wish you would have been there. Can’t you just come to class with me?’ Roger tried as he let his body slide down the wall and sat down on the cold, grey brick surface beneath him. He didn’t have to gesture for Brian to come sit next to him; the astronomy student was already crouching down next to him, smiling at the proposal.

  
‘I mean, I could try, but I don’t think I would stand out in molecular biology, toxicology, or biotechnology,’ Brian reminded him, wrapping an arm loosely around Roger’s shoulder.

  
‘Well, I don’t think I would even have the courage to open my books on electromagnetism, thermodynamics, or plate tectonics,’ Roger said, and Brian chuckled.

  
‘Lucky for you then that plate tectonics has nothing to do with astrophysics, it’s part of geophysics.’

  
‘Frankly, Brian, I can’t even tell which subjects are part of my own study field and which aren’t, let alone that I would know those of yours,’ Roger sighed as if he couldn’t believe he still had to explain these kind of matters. Brian just smiled and watched while Roger produced a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from the pocket of his jacket.

  
‘Do you mind if I…’ Roger asked with a nod at the items, and Brian shook his head. He looked on when Roger took a cigarette from the paper box, placed the little white stick between his lips, brought the lighter up, and lit the piece. Brian stared at the ash tip that instantly started forming; he generally wasn’t a big fan of smoking, but he didn’t mind it when it was Roger who was the one putting up a cigarette. He liked the tranquillity of sitting close to each other when Roger was busy smoking, the small circles of smoke his partner would slowly exhale, the way he would discard the ash tip on the surface next to him every now and then… It was all so graciously peaceful in the middle of the daily rush of school, homework, and the anxious attempt to keep their relationship a secret from the rest of the world, and Brian couldn’t help loving Roger’s smoke breaks for that reason.

  
‘If I would lit this building on fire, do you think I wouldn’t have to go to bird sound recognition class?’ Roger suddenly broke the silence while toying around with the lighter dangerously close to the school building they were leaning against, and Brian chuckled.

  
‘I know you’ve only a first year biology student, but I think you ought to be aware that lighting a brick building on fire with a lighter isn’t going to be realistic.’

  
‘Too bad,’ Roger sighed. ‘I’m still temped to try it, though. I’m at this point where I’m willing to rather hang out with you for some longer.’

  
‘Tell me about it,’ Brian agreed. ‘What time are you going to be off?’

  
‘At three, I believe. If I’m not leaving beforehand,’ Roger said with an air of cheekiness that betrayed that he had probably already determined that he was going to sneak away. Brian gave a bit of an awkward chuckle; in the two years and some months that he had been studying at London Imperial, he had never skipped a single class, while it had taken Roger no more than a few weeks to decide which glasses to go to and which ones he deemed to be worthy of his time and which weren’t. Brian would never have the courage to intentionally miss a class without a good reason, and he had to admit he was sometimes jealous of Roger’s ability to not care so much about what other people wanted from him and just go his own way. Not necessarily when it came to skipping school, but in life in general.

  
‘You’re lucky, though. I’m gonna be stuck at observational astrophysics and universe structure- and design class until five,’ Brian said, obviously displeased with his schedule for a Friday afternoon.

  
‘And you’re sure I can’t persuade you to skip class and go somewhere together?’ Roger proposed for what had to be at least the fiftieth time. He seemed to never lose hope Brian would give in to him one day, even though his offers of simply missing class had so far always been turned down.

  
‘I’m absolutely sure. Sorry, babe,’ Brian added when Roger gave him a sulky look. ‘But we’re going to the movies tomorrow night, right? And I’ll call you tonight, as soon as my parents are out.’

  
‘Where are they going to on a Friday night? To the bingo at the community centre?’ Roger joked, and Brian couldn’t help joining them.

  
‘They’re not that ancient yet, Roger. But they often go out for a walk in the evenings, which gives me the time to telephone you. For now, then, that is,’ Brian corrected himself. ‘My mother already noticed I was on the phone a lot more than usual, and I don’t know if I can continue doing that once they see the phone bill from last month,’ Brian reminded the both of them.

  
‘Just tell your parent it’s about a school project. Or that you’re talking to a girl you’re seeing.’

  
‘Which wouldn’t be far from the truth,’ Brian said, grating his knuckles over Roger’s girlishly long hair.

  
‘Why, thank you!’ Roger gave a screech of ill-played indignation. ‘I think I’ll be going before I’m going to be insulted even more here,’ he smiled, pressing the burning tip of the last remaining part of his cigarette against the bricks. Brian followed his example of getting up from the cold floor below them, giving Roger his schoolbag and watching as he loosely swung one of the straps around his shoulder.

  
‘I’ll talk to you tonight. Best of luck surviving this hell until five o’clock,’ Roger grimaced, and Brian nodded. ‘Oh! And before I forget about it…’ Roger pulled his bag closer, undid the front zipper, and pulled out an envelope. ‘Here you go.’

  
Brian blushed slightly when Roger handed him the plain white envelope, which had not been marked with any kind of name, post code, or address – only with a small heart drawn in grey pencil on the right underside of the paper. It was Roger’s reply to the letter Brian had given him in a similarly secretive environment, and it was in turn part of the grander scheme of things of them trying to be in touch as much as possible – meeting at school, meeting in their spare time, telephoning, writing, and doing whatever other opportunities were out there that could aid them in their desire of always wanting to be with each other.

  
‘Thank you. I’ll reply as soon as I can,’ Brian promised while he stuffed the letter between the pages of his agenda, which he hid underneath a few notebooks – for their relationship, safety before everything really was a rule of thumb.

  
‘You don’t have to hurry… But you know I love hearing from you as much as possible,’ Roger said in a rare moment of affectionate vulnerability – rare at a public setting like school, that was. Brian got to see him like that often enough when they met up at Roger’s student room, where they were sure they were on their own with no curious eyes to spy on them. It was a side of Roger which most people probably couldn’t even imagine him having; they knew him as this, loud, outgoing, worriless adolescent who seemed to prefer having fun with people over getting himself involved in committed relationships. The thought of just how wrong they all were brought a smile to Brian’s face, one that only grew wider when Roger looked around before stretching on his tiptoes to press a careful kiss against his cheek.

  
‘I love you. I’ll be waiting for you tonight,’ he whispered, and Brian, after having looked at the seemingly empty part of the schoolyard he could see between the narrow inlet between the two buildings, returned the kiss swiftly.

  
‘I love you too,’ Brian whispered back. ‘Now off you go, your class is gonna start in a few minutes.’

  
‘Oh yeah, what a shame it would be if I would miss the introduction of bird sound recognition class…’ Roger said while dramatically throwing his hands up in the air. Brian rolled his eyes and smiled at the wink Roger flashed him before he turned around and walked back to the visible part of the schoolyard, off to the final classes of that week. Brian watched while his silhouette slowly vanished in the distance, feeling a tinge of both happiness and heaviness as he saw Roger leaving him. The meeting, as always, had managed to bright the entirety of his otherwise dull day of school, but having to watch him leave and knowing he was returning to the outside world where he was going to pretend like nothing was going on between the two of them, always made Brian feel as if someone had stabbed an arrow right through his heart. The thought of himself having to do the exact same thing in a moment – when enough time had passed between Roger and him leaving this obscure place to make sure no one could track the two of them back to having been at this location together – did not make Brian feel any better.

  
In an attempt to distract himself from the reality of never being able to present themselves as a couple, Brian forced himself to think about better things they had gone through together. He thought about the first time he had set eyes on Roger, which seemed to be so long ago, yet simultaneously he also still remembered it as if it all happened yesterday. In reality, it had been just over four months ago, when he had still been in his second year of university. He recalled that it had been a strange situation, where the academic year had not yet ended and dragged on slowly until the dreaded final exams for most people, yet the new students had already been invited for an introduction week at their school-to-be. In some of these last weeks, Brian, as a shy, quiet, and somewhat withdrawn student, had been persuaded by his astrochemistry teacher to sign up as a group leader for these new people. Until this very day, he had no idea why he had actually agreed to this plan; he was not at all a born leader or even just a group person, but he figured it had been something about the idea of helping first years find their way around the university – something Brian wished he would have had when he first arrived at London Imperial College. Or maybe because he didn’t want to disappoint his wonderfully understanding astrochemistry teacher, on whom he could always rely. Or maybe he really did want to climb out of his comfort zone for once and try something entirely new… Whatever the reason had been, he had signed up, which was something he never could have guessed would have turned out as positively for him as it had.

  
After multiple sleepless night wondering how on earth to interact with a bunch of unknown eighteen year olds, Brian found himself being paired up with a much more outgoing third year law student he had never seen in his life, and was sentt off to watch over a small group of twelve future students for a period of five days. The group came from very different – conflicting, if you will – disciplinaries, stretching from Spanish to politicology and from pharmacy to applied mathematics. Brian, however, only seemed to be able to concentrate on a boy called Roger Taylor, a pretty, blue-eyed, seventeen year old future biology student who stood out through his high fashion patchwork clothes and the ever-lasting half-adorable half-mischievous smile on his lips. It had been love at first sight for Brian, something he later would later learn was also the case with Roger towards him. At that point, though, all Brian felt like someone as wonderful as this boy was way out of reach for someone like him; all he could do was trying to keep his untameable curls in place, put on as much as a confident smile as he could manage, and attempt not to be too awkward around the seemingly relaxed and laid-back Roger.

  
Whether any of this had been the key to catch Roger’s attention – and simultaneously to his heart – Brian had never dared to ask, but he had found that within a matter of mere hours, his brand-new crush had already permanently moved to sit, stand, and walk next to him. Soon enough, he found both to his joy and his anxiety that Roger had decided to be at his side for the entirety of the introduction week. And though he at first hardly dared to cough, blink, or even breathe around the boy out of fear he’d do something stupid, he quickly became unusually comfortable around Roger when the latter starting conversating with him constantly. Brian discovered just what an amazing person his crush was to be around, and felt like he fell in love with him more every day, every hour, every minute even. Each morning of the introduction week he got up, he felt a swarm of butterflies fluttering in his stomach, a feeling that only grew when he caught sight of Roger in the canteen their group met up each morning. The downside was that with every passing day, he knew the end of the introduction week was coming up, and he felt that the inevitable end of the new yet strong bond between Roger and him starting to creep up on them.

  
This was why the last day of the introduction week was a bittersweet one for Brian. While he was excited and nervous as ever about seeing Roger again, he realised deep inside that it was probably going to be their last meeting – for this school year in any case, and probably also in the future, considering that the talkative and quick-witted boy was unlikely to face any troubles finding friends that would be way cooler than Brian knew he could ever be with his twenty-four hour a day seven days a week school and homework schedule. He carried this uneasy feeling with him all day and managed pretty well not to let Roger notice any of his heaviness, but he did have to blink some tears away during the final speech of the school head that marked the conclusion of the introduction week for the first years. When the applause for the man had died out, Brian had turned to the boy standing next to him, not too sure how to say a proper goodbye to someone he’d gotten unusually close to – fell in love with, even – in the last handful of days. In the end, however, Roger saved him from having to start some kind of awkward speech on how nice it had been getting to know him and wishing him best of luck in the new school year, because he had asked him out to get a drink before Brian could even open his mouth. This did not prevent him from opening it right after; in the first case not even to agree to the plan, but because his jaw quite literally dropped. He had never in his wildest dreams been able to imagine that Roger was going to ask him to do something just between the two of them, even if it was just as friends. That later even the just-as-friends-part would turn out to be much more than that, would probably have made Brian fall from his feet if he had heard it right then right there, in the middle of the school yard, surrounded by hundreds of people while noticing only one of them. His reply was a full-mouthed yes once he managed to speak at all again, and the rest of Roger and him spending the summer together and Roger eventually asking Brian to be his boyfriend the week before the new academic year was going to start, was history.

  
The sound of a church bell somewhere in the distance awoke Brian from his thoughts, and he cursed under his breath when he realised the new hour – and thus the new lecture – had already started. He got off the brick floor, wiped the dust and dirt off his trousers, swung his bag off the ground, and hastily mingled with the other students that hurried to make their classes on time.

  
# # #

  
Brian was happy to find that he was able to sneak inside the lecture hall just before the professor closed the door, and that Matthew and Sam had saved a spot for him at the edge of a trail of seats, where he could easily sit down without needing everyone to get up for him. Brian made his way to the place as quickly as possible and slipped down on his seat, sighing in relief when he found that no one seemed to be judging him for entering the classroom so late.

  
‘I suppose you really had to discuss a lot with this old friend of yours, because I don’t think I’ve ever seen you being late,’ Sam whispered. Brian glanced at his friend to see if it had been a reprimand, but he was relieved to see that Sam flashed him a smile instead.

  
‘Yeah, we had a lot to catch up on,’ Brian whispered back, turning to the other side to pick his notebook and pencil case out of his bag – more so that Sam wouldn’t notice the blush on his face than because he actually needed the aforementioned items. There was, after all, no way he could possibly focus on observational astrophysics anymore after his meeting with Roger; he could still feel the blush reddening his cheeks, Roger’s kiss lingering on his lips, his words spinning around in his mind. There was nothing Brian rather would have done than reading the letter his boyfriend had given him during their break, but he knew it would be way too dangerous to carry material that proved their relationship anywhere while out in public. Even Sam and Matthew were never supposed to find out about him seeing Roger. Though Brian had a feeling they were progressive enough to support him in his relationship, or in any case not to mind him dating someone of the same sex, it was simply too dangerous to share the information with anyone, even with friends. After all, you could never know who more, be it unintentionally or not, would be given access to this sensitive data, and whether their intentions were good or bad. Once again, it was a typical case of better safe than sorry, much like the rest of their relationship.

  
Knowing he could not read the letter anyway, and that the first exam weeks were going to come up in a matter of mere weeks, Brian tried to pull himself together as much as possible in order to focus. He pulled out a pencil and a crisp white piece of paper, but once he did not get any further than noting down the date and the name of the course. While Matthew and Sam quietly chatted to each other and the people behind them seemed to be eating a bag of crisps or God knows what other kind of noisy foods, Brian tried to concentrate on the incoherent mass of information the professor provided about the advantages and disadvantages of recently modernised adaptive optics in studying the composition of galaxies and nebulae. Needless to say, comparing the effect of different telescopes on the image quality of outer space objects was the last thing Brian cared about at the moment – all he wanted was to hurry home, read the letter, and wait for his parents to leave so he could talk to Roger without having to worry about anyone finding out about them.

  
With this much more interesting prospect in mind, Brian managed to drag himself through the endless descriptions of telescopes and outer space cameras. After what felt like three year but couldn’t have been more than two hours, Brian noticed that the lecture had seemed to come to an end, judging by the people around him getting up and starting to leave the room. He glanced up at the clock to find that it was three o’clock, meaning that Roger was going to be dismissed at this time. How he wished he was done with school at this time also, so that he could go to him and spend the rest of the afternoon together, instead of having to sit in a stuffy old classroom for two more hours…

  
‘Brian, are you coming? The classroom isn’t gonna move towards you, if that’s what you’re waiting for,’ Sam remarked. Brian looked up and apologised for his absent-mindedness for wat must have been the fifth time that day and followed their example of packing up his school supplies and moving to the room for the last seminar of the day. Normally it was a relief to Brian to finally be able to work on practical topics instead of only sitting around listening to teachers the whole day long, but at the moment he would have preferred to stay in the lecture hall, where he could get away with leaning back and daydreaming between the multitude of people. Now, in a group of twenty-five students, he actually had to pretend like he was interested in universe structure and design class, and Brian feared that this was going to be too much to ask from him on this Friday afternoon, with his boyfriend’s letter in his backpack and the prospect of spending the evening on the telephone with him on his mind.

  
With all the energy he could gather in his body and brain, Brian managed to take his school supplies out of his bag for the last class of the day, take a minimum amount of notes on the professor’s speech on the structure of elements in galaxies, and participate somewhere halfway decently in the group assignment their teacher gave his class. While continually glancing at the clock of which the hands seemed to be moving deliberately slowly that day, Brian followed Sam’s example of opening their Modern Encyclopaedia of Universe Design and Structure to find the required information to the questions they had been assigned. How he had done it would forever remain a mystery to Brian, but after a certain amount of the seminar seemed to come to the end he had been hoping for all day. The professor invited all students to share their findings – which Brian left to Matthew, given that he was sure he was not in a position to tell the class any kind of coherent story at that moment – and rounded the class off by giving a way too elaborate summary of the matter they had covered that week. This final speech prompted multiple people to discreetly start putting pens back in their pencil cases and close their school books, and Brian figured that he might as well start doing this too so he could leave as soon as possible once the teacher would be done with his endlessly long final talk.

  
When they were finally dismissed a few minutes to five, Brian’s first instinct was to jump up and run towards the bus station next to the school campus, but he managed to contain himself. Even though getting home quickly was his number one priority at that moment, he suddenly remembered that he couldn’t leave Sam and Matthew for a second time of that day. Not only would it be cruel, but also it might draw too much of their attention; they had probably not yet forgotten the first time he had ran out of the classroom that day, and they also had certainly noticed that he had been absent-minded ever since the meeting with ‘an old friend’. For these reasons, Brian calmly got up and patiently wait for his classmates to pack up their pencils and notebooks while joining them in their conversation about the upcoming release of the second album of The Doors, a promising new band from America he remembered had made their breakthrough just in time with Roger and him having met each other. Inwardly focussing on this last aspect of this fact rather than on the former, Brian slowly yet insistently led his friends out of the classroom, the building, and the school campus. He eventually managed to break away from the two at the bus station when his transport had arrived. They wished each other a nice weekend, best of luck with the homework for their dreaded quantum mechanics course, and promised to be in touch about the upcoming essay they had to write on Einstein’s contribution to astrophysics, a link none of them had been able to discover so far.

  
Brian felt both satisfied and relieved when he settled himself inside the bus – satisfied with the way he had managed to appear not all too distant and distracted during the last two hours, but at the same time also relieved that he no longer had to keep up appearances. He could finally go home, lock himself away in his bedroom, and focus on the letter and the telephone call with Roger. They had decided to go out to the movies on Saturday, and were going to discuss the details of that tonight. He could hardly wait to talk to Roger again, and could hardly oppress the tendency to grab the letter out of the bag. He knew that the chances of one of the other three passengers finding out that the anonymous, unaddressed letter he was reading in fact was a love letter from a male correspondent were impossibly slim, but still, Brian was so conditioned to keep anything concerning their relationship private that he chose not to take this minimal risk.

  
Brian got off the bus twenty minutes later at the bus stop in their neighbourhood. He quickly passed a handful of monotonous streets, hastily greeted some neighbours and family friends he encountered on his way, but was most of all happy when he saw his own house appearing around the corner of the street. He opened the gate that separated their garden from the pavement, produced the key cord containing the key of their front door from the back pocket of his jeans, and gave himself access to the hallway. Before he got the time to even throw his schoolbag on its usual place underneath the staircase and his coat on top of it, the door to the living room opened, and his mother appeared to greet him.

  
‘Good afternoon, dear!’ she said as she approached him and reached out to kiss his cheek. ‘How was school today?’

  
‘Hi, mum. It was alright,’ Brian said a little distantly – he had already forgotten about most of the school day after just having fantasised about his upcoming secret date with the person she never would guess could ever be more than just a friend to her son.

  
‘Brian…’ she suddenly sighed after she had withdrawn herself from his vicinity. ‘How many times am I going to have to tell you not to throw your bag underneath the staircase? Look at that, it’ll get all dirty! And think of all the expensive books that are inside of it…’

  
‘Yes, mum,’ Brian said just to stop the sermon he knew for a fact he was going to get if he wasn’t going to acknowledge that his mother was right, and he picked up the back and hooked the strap over the guardrail to show he had understood her message.

  
‘That’s better,’ his mother agreed. ‘Now, take off your coat and wash your hands, dinner’s practically ready,’ she said and turned back to the kitchen, and Brian had to keep himself from groaning in irritation. After literally having been stuck around other people from nine through five, the last thing he was looking forward to was having to conversate with him family at the dinner table right away. He had hoped to be able to sneak upstairs and take a look at Roger’s letter before having to come down for supper, but knowing his parents – and mainly his father – there was no way that was going to happen now.

  
Out of silent protest, Brian threw his coat on the spot where he had previously discarded his school bag, and sauntered to the kitchen. The table had already been set out, and while his mother was busy dividing the potatoes over the three plates, his father flicked through yesterday’s newspaper. Brian hoped his father wouldn’t notice him if he would just quietly slip towards his place, but he knew that also was not going to be realistic; his father was always the first one to ask him about school when he returned after a long day like this. Sometimes Brian enjoyed talking about school with his parents, and other days he couldn’t stand the idea that his parents always felt the need to track down his every move at school. Being their only child, he always felt the eternal pressure of their parents wanting him to succeed in life and them seemingly thinking that pressuring him to share his experiences and grades at school was going to help him with graduating from university.

  
As expected, the moment Brian walked into the kitchen, his father put the newspaper aside and pulled the chair next to him away from the table, indicating that he had to come and sit next to him. Brian begrudgingly walked in his direction, facing down at the floor instead of looking at his father.

  
‘Brian, boy, how was school today?’ his father asked loudly enough for the neighbours on the other side of their semidetached house to probably overhear the question.

  
‘Fine, dad,’ he answered in a much softer voice, hoping his father would get the hint and keep his voice down. Not to his surprise, his father was too caught up in his own concerns – which were overhearing his son – to notice.

  
‘Which classes did you have?’ he asked in the same loud voice, and Brian had to oppress a sigh.

  
‘Theoretical history of astrophysics, observational astrophysics, and… universe structure and design,’ he answered, keeping his gaze on the red and white gingham tablecloth in order to avoid having to face his father and whose probing eyes.

  
‘Were all of those lectures?’ his father continued.

  
‘The last one was a seminar,’ Brian said begrudgingly, looking up shortly when his mother started dividing the plates of food between the three of them. He hoped they could soon just settle down to eat so his father might get distracted by his dinner instead of by his eternal desire to pry in Brian’s personal businesses. But as long as his mother was still busy dividing dinner, Brian knew he was submitted to his father’s questions.

  
‘And what was the first course, you said? Theory of…?’

  
‘Theoretical history of astrophysics,’ Brian repeated himself, wondering how blind exactly his father was not to notice the hints he was dropping by his short answers and incomplete sentences that he did not want to have this conversation right now – and he especially did not want to talk about his incompetence in the last mentioned course.  
‘It that the course you struggled with lately?’ his father remarked.

  
‘Eh… Yeah, a little, I guess,’ Brian admitted awkwardly.

  
‘What did you get for the test last block again?’

  
‘Sixty-five percent,’ Brian mumbled, regretting even having come home for dinner that night. It wasn’t like he had had an alternative he could easily opt for, but right now he wished he would have asked if he could have gone home with Sam, or with Matthew, or even better, with Roger...  
‘Should we start looking for a private tutor?’ his father asked, and Brian wasn’t sure if his cheeks were starting to flush out of embarrassment or out of angriness that his father would never leave him alone for five consecutive seconds.

  
Luckily, his mother interfered before Brian could get the chance to probably say something he would regret later. ‘Harold…’ she said disapprovingly to her husband. ‘The poor boy has been at school from nine to five, can you give him a moment to breathe?’

  
‘But Ruth, honestly, you don’t want his grades to slip because we didn’t do something fast enough, now do you?’ Harold asked her, finally turning his attention away from his son.

  
‘Of course I don’t, but dinnertime is not the right moment to discuss such matters. Besides, a sixty-five is not an insufficient grade,’ his wife said as she untied the strings of her apron and hung it up over the back of a chair. She sat down at the table, which was usually the sign that they could start eating. Tonight, however, Brian did not have the courage to pick up his cutlery before his parents would settle down calmly and stop this awkward disagreement about what to do with his mediocre grades on one of his courses.

  
‘But it might turn into an insufficient grade if we don’t do something about it!’ Harold argued, and Brian looked at his mother with a bit of a desperate glance, silently begging her to put a halt to the useless and most of all unwanted conversation. Luckily for Brian, she seemed to get the hint.

  
‘Harold, we’ll discuss this later. Let’s enjoy our dinner before it turns cold,’ Ruth suggested, and Brian was the first to put this proposal into practice by taking a spoonful of potatoes into his mouth. It wasn’t that he was particularly hungry; it was just to make sure he could not answer any questions his father might be tempted to ask.

  
‘I still think it would be a good idea to start looking for a private tutor before it’s too late,’ his father murmured, but as soon as he noticed the rest of his family had already let go of the subject, he gave in and followed their example of simply eating his meal instead of continuing the unwanted discussion about his son’s grades.

  
‘So, apart from your classes, did anything fun happen today?’ Ruth asked Brian after a few minutes of somewhat awkward silence. Brian, willing to answer this non-school-related question, quickly jumped in on the opportunity to get the conversation at the table going and relief the tension in the air that lingered around since the moment his father had involuntarily fallen silent.

  
‘Just some usual things. I hung out with Sam and Matthew... And Roger,’ Brian added after a few seconds of silence, hoping his mother didn’t see the smile that started tugging at the corners of his lips when he mentioned the name of the person she thought was nothing more than a school mate.

  
‘Roger… the boy you met at the introduction week?’

  
‘Yes, that’s Roger. We hung out during the lunch break,’ Brian answered while prodding around in his potatoes without actually eating any of it; the moment Roger’s name was mentioned, the butterflies in his stomach made it impossible for him to focus on anything else besides his boyfriend.

  
‘I’m surprised that you still spend time with him so much. You know, not because of him, but since you’re not in the same classes, or even in the same year,’ his mother said with a touch of positive surprise in her voice. She knew her son was quiet and reserved and usually preferred spending time on his own instead of putting it into relationships with others, which was why it was so surprising to her that he was now putting a lot of effort into what she thought was a ‘friendship’ with a first-year student he had met during the introduction week he had voluntarily signed himself up for.

  
‘I know, but that’s why we meet up around our classes.’

  
‘And why you’re on the phone with him all the time,’ his father suddenly added to the conversation, and Brian had a hard time trying not to choke on the piece of meat he had just taken a bite of – that was something he had hoped his parents had not found out about yet, or preferably, that they would never find out about.

  
‘What… what makes you think so?’ Brian asked as casually as possible, but he knew that the stumble in his sentence betrayed him.

  
‘The phone bill doesn’t lie, son. You’re not using the telephone anymore, starting tonight. And next time I see this amount of charge on the bill, you’re going to be the one to pay for it,’ his father informed him sternly, and Brian bit down his bottom lip. He had not been expecting his parents to find out yet, nor was he prepared for a scolding right now. Tonight was also possibly the worst moment for his father’s decision ever; he had promised Roger to call him that night, and even though he had not planned to do so before, Brian decided to tell his parents about his plans.

  
‘But I have to use the telephone tonight, Roger and me are going out to see a movie tomorrow evening-’ Brian tried to bring in, but he was interrupted before he could finish his sentence.

  
‘Do you think going out is a good idea right now? Shouldn’t you spend that time studying for your history of astrophysics course?’ his father interfered, but Brian’s mother gave him a look that immediately silenced him. Brian had to oppress a smile; his mother worried as much (if not more) about his social interactions with classmates as his father did about his grades, and he knew this event he had planned with Roger would make her pick his side again.

  
Ruth, placing a hand on Brian’s lower arm, started to correct all her husband had just told them. ‘What your father really means with all of this, is that we would like you to find a cheaper way of staying in touch with your friends, and not to forget your school while doing so. Don’t we, Harold?’ Ruth addressed her husband with a stern look, and he murmured something Brian assumed was supposed to be meant to be a sound of agreement.

  
‘Thanks, mom. I’ll go upstairs to make homework right after dinner,’ Brian promised. His mother gave him a loving rub over his cheek, and even his father managed to produce a small smile. They finished dinner, cleared up the table, and Brian kept his promise by going upstairs right after – the only difference between his promise and his actual plans was that he wasn’t going upstairs to make homework, but to finally look into the letter he had longed to read ever since Roger had given it to him during their lunch break.  
The moment he exchanged the kitchen for the hallway, Brian picked up the backpack he had dropped on the floor about half an hour earlier and hurried his way upstairs. The moment he burst through the door of his bedroom, he threw his bag down on his bed again and unzipped the side pocket in which he had stuffed the letter earlier that day. He plunged down on his desk chair and shoved some astronomy books and hastily scribbled lecture notes aside to make some room for the letter. Before opening it, he reached over to the left side of his desk to put the stylus of his record playing on the Beatles-LP he had left on the turntable the night before. Without truly paying attention to the exact song that was playing, Brian opened the envelope and took out the off-white piece of writing paper. The first thing he noticed when he unfolded the A4-sized letter, was the row of hearts Roger had drawn all around the edges of the paper with a red pencil. Brian immediately felt his cheeks starting to flush at just the sign of the tiny symbols surrounding the paper he was holding between his slightly shaky fingers; it was one of those little things Roger would do to that made him feel like the luckiest person in the world. Well, the luckiest person in the world stuck in the unluckiest situation and society, that was.

  
Pushing this thought aside, Brian fully unfolded the paper, and started reading the message he had been longing to read all day long.

  
_Dear, dear Brian,_

  
_It’s Friday morning now that I’m writing this, and I’m still more than just a little upset about not getting to see you yesterday. I had been looking forward to meeting up again and kissing until our lips would grow numb, but it seems like some kind of invisible force in the universe won’t allow us to be together lately. I hate my professor for biochemistry more than anything – just when we’ve figured out a time and place to see each other in private, he decides to give an extension to his class on God knows what kind of subject no one cares about and forbids us to leave, regardless of whether we have other responsibilities besides his class. That arrogant piece of shit probably actually believes there is nothing out there for us besides his class and the homework he assigns us! And all I could think about while being in there was how you must have been waiting on me and I was so afraid you’d think I’d stood you up on purpose… I just want to tell you again that I’m so sorry (even though you’ve told me not to because I couldn’t help it) and that next time I’ll just sneak out of the classroom if this guy thinks his class is the only priority we have (even though I know you don’t want me to – the only time I’d deliberately do something I know you don’t want me to do!)_

  
_Anyway, I’m afraid there is nothing we can do about it right now, apart from making sure we’re going to see each other on Saturday. I’ve been looking forward to going out to the movies all week – I can’t wait to finally be alone with you at a place no one knows us and no one will suspect anything from us - that is, as long as we keep our hands to ourselves… Which I’m afraid still is a must as long as we’re out in public, unfortunately. On the other side, though, it’s pretty dark in a movie theatre, so I don’t think anyone will notice if I slip my hand down your underwear…_

  
_No, don’t worry about me doing any of that – you know I’d do everything to make sure no one will find out about us as long as it’s illegal, even though I hope that will soon change. Because wouldn’t that be wonderful, us being able to go out in broad daylight together without being arrested for ‘public indecency’ or whatever they call it? To no longer be forced to live in secrecy anymore and just live our lives?_

  
_Alright, I should probably stop this daydreaming before I’ll drift away from the topic, which was us going out to the movies. Have you already decided which one we’re gonna see? I chose last time, so now it’s your turn, and I’m begging you to pick something thriller-like, or at least something with some kind of adventure in it. I love you endlessly, but if you’re dragging me into something like The Sound of Music, I’ll really have to walk right out of the room or I’ll scream throughout the whole movie. So please, keep that in mind while choosing something!_

  
_It’s fifteen to nine right now so I’m gonna have to hurry to get to school on time (if I can be bothered to hurry; I have biochemistry first thing, so maybe I’ll just come in late to compensate for the time that douchebag teacher of us kept us in his class for too long yesterday) I’m so much looking forwards to going out on a date with you, and this time we’ll make sure no one will come in between us._

  
_Lots of love,_

  
_Roger xxx_

  
Brian smiled throughout the whole process of reading the letter – after which he reread it, and reread it again. He could look at Roger’s words, his boyish stationary, his way of linking letters to each other, the way he dotted his i’s with oversized circles, the slightly smudged dark blue ballpoint pen ink, his messy habit of crossing words off and correcting them in the space above the old word, and countless of other tiny details about his boyfriend’s way of composing a letter. Everything about it was adorable, and Brian couldn’t help picturing Roger sitting at his desk at home, with the radio playing in the background, fully concentrated on drawing hearts with a soft red pencil on the edges of the letter he was now holding in his hands.

  
Brian opened the top drawer of his desk and pulled out a notebook, out of which he carefully tore a piece of paper, and stood up to fetch his pencil case from his backpack. Once he had gathered all the necessities required for the writing of a letter, he sat down again and started scribbling down the first sentences of his reply to Roger.

  
_Dear Roger,_

  
_I believe that no matter how often I tell you it isn’t necessary, you will continue to tell me that you’re sorry about not showing up on our meeting Thursday, but how could I be mad at you for the teacher not letting you go at the time the class was supposed to be over? Speaking of which, how could I ever be mad at you for anything? You’re the sweetest boy I’ve ever met in my life, and I’m positive that nothing you could do could ever make me mad at you. Unless you would start sneaking out of classes before the teacher is done talking to make one of our appointments – no matter how much I love being with you, school comes first, young man! (that’s what my father would say…)_

  
_Speaking of whom… Do you remember I told you that my parents would probably be angry when they discovered the phone bill of the last months? Well, this evening I found out that the phone bill came in already, and my father was not pleased, to say at the very least. He told me I wouldn’t be allowed to call you anymore, and I think this is the ideal moment for me to listen to your advice of stopping to always listen to my parents and disobey them every now and then-_

  
The insistent ringing of the doorbell startled Brian, who was so absorbed in his letter that the sudden sound made him lose grip on his ballpoint pen, leaving a messy line of dark blue ink all over the page. With a sigh, the student look up from the letter he was writing to instead glance at the clock, wondering grumpily who on earth would be at their door at fifteen to eight on a Friday evening. Family or neighbours never dropped by in the evenings, friends like Sam, Matthew, or Roger would not come over all the way to his house without having asked first to make sure they wouldn’t travel all the way for nothing, and it was not the time of the year for charity organisations to send people out in the streets looking for people to donate money or time for their cause. The question thus remained, who the hell was disrupting them on this Friday evening?

  
Brian heard the door of the hallway opening, followed by the heels of his mother’s shoes clicking on the tiled floor on her way to the front door. Brian felt a sudden urge to find out what she was saying and who she was talking to, so he reached over to turn off the music and quietly listened to what was going on downstairs. He could, however, not really make anything up; his mother’s voice was soft as usual, and he did not recognise the low male voice of whoever she was talking to. Just when Brian was losing interest in spying on his mother and her interlocutor and touched the stylus of his pickup again, his mother caught his attention by calling out to his father with a more than slightly disturbing message.

  
‘Harold? Harold, there is a police officer at the door.’

  
Brian dropped the pickup and waited breathlessly for the reaction of his father, who seemed just as surprised as his wife was.  
‘A police officer?’

  
‘Well, two, actually… Can you… can you come over here?’ The shakiness in his mother’s voice was audible, and Brian felt his heart pounding in his chest when he heard the legs of the kitchen chair scratching along the floor and his father moving towards the front door, and even though Brian felt like a lump was forming in his throat, the urge to discover what was going on himself was stronger than his anxiety, and he soundlessly made his way to the door of his bedroom. He quietly opened it and put it ajar, which allowed him to look between the door and the doorpost to glance downstairs. As expected, there was a man in a black uniform and matching hat, and when Brian looked a bit closer, he saw a second silhouette dressed in the same outfit. They were undoubtedly police officers, and Brian was starting to feel more uncomfortable with every passing second the thought of what might have drawn them to their house.

  
‘Good evening, officers. Is there anything we can help you with?’ Brian heard his father say, sounding more confident about the presence of the unexpected guest than his wife – and certainly more comfortable than he was at this moment. There was no way these men could have come for his parents; there was nothing his father, a decent, law-abiding office clerk, could have done wrong, not to even mention his angelic mother who one could not even catch doing something petty like crossing the street at an inconvenient point of time. As far as he was concerned, Brian was the only one in the house to keep a dirty secret that was grave enough to draw police officers to their place. He shook off the thought – Roger and he were always so careful, they had taken all possible precautions and safety measures to make sure no one would ever find out about their forbidden relationship, had been as secretive about their private businesses as a couple could possibly be. There was no way anyone could ever have seen them together in any kind of form that stretched further than just two students who happened to know each other from the introduction week, let alone that they could ever suspect them of anything ordinary people would deem ‘immoral’. There was no way these officers had come for him, Brian tried to tell himself so desperately that he completely lost track on the conversation that was going on downstairs.

But just when he had managed to store all his anxious thoughts away, he heard one of the police officers call out his name, and Brian knew it could only be one thing.


	2. Chapter 2

Brian was positive that if he hadn’t been suffering from claustrophobia before, he surely would have had it after spending God knew how many hours in the two-by-two metres cell he had been thrown into after having been arrested that morning. There was literally nothing for him to focus on apart from the false but frightening notion that the room seemed to get smaller with every minute he spent being locked up inside of it. There was no clock to tell how long he had been there, no window to see if it was still light outside or if the morning had already faded into a dusky October afternoon, not a single sign of guards or officers walking by to let him know that he hadn’t completely been abandoned. There was nothing around to distract himself with; it was just him and his worried mind, locked away from the world in a claustrophobically small iron police cell, without a single indication that this lonely hell was going to be over anywhere soon.

Brian found himself sitting against the wall, endlessly tapping his left foot against the floor in nervousness. It made a dull, clattering sound against the steel ground of the cell that was unpleasantly loud in the silence that surrounded him, yet he still preferred listening to the headache-inflicting tapping of his shoes, of which the laces had been taken out before they had left him alone in the cell, than being confronted with the way too rapid pounding of his own heart. The sound of rubber against steel was terrible, but it was all he had to distract himself from the harsh reality of having been arrested on account of suspicions of homosexual actions.

Brian remembered that he at first had been using the hem of his shirt as a means of distraction, until he had noticed that this was not exactly beneficial to the garment. The fabric of it had literally _visibly_ thinned out over the period of time he had been using it to let out his fear and hopelessness, to the point where he could see right through it; he had been twisting it and twirling it and pulling at it until it had turned transparent.

That was when he had realised that he had to find something else to distract himself with, and given that there was no clock, no window, no calendar, no newspaper, no anything, he had apparently resorted to tapping his foot against the floor. He couldn’t remember having started doing this, though; he was way too far lost in his mind to notice his own movements. All he could think of was how locked up he felt, how afraid he was of being abandoned, and even more of _not_ being abandoned and being taken out of this room to be dragged into the next stage of being arrested. This would be, if he remembered correctly from social studies, being interrogated, questioned by a small group of police officers, who would push you into confessing to what they thought was a crime you had committed, whereas Brian could not get himself to view loving Roger as a crime.

And that was exactly the only thing he worried about even more than about what was going to happen to him next; it was what was going to happen to Roger. He had not seen him around this place – he had been told that his boyfriend had been arrested as well, but he hadn’t managed to catch a glimpse of him, to hear a word from him, or anything else that would indicate his presence. All he knew was that he was supposed to be somewhere in this same building, somewhere locked up in a similarly small isolated cell, and knowing him, he was probably even more terrified than he was himself. His poor, sweet, innocent Roger, first year university student, who had only turned eighteen a few months ago, barely out of childhood. Roger, who in essence was bright and bubbly and outgoing, but who at the same time would always immediately cling to him the moment they encountered an unfamiliar and possibly hazardous situation. And now, in the most terrifying situation Brian was sure both of them had ever experienced, he wasn’t there to comfort him. The thought of Roger, crouched in the corner of his cell, skinny arms wrapped around  trembling knees, crystal white tears spilling from pretty blue eyes, made Brian feel more worse and helpless than any lonesome isolation or perspective of interrogation could ever do to him.

He simply wished he could be with Roger. He wished the guards who had handcuffed his hands together and ridded him of all items that could possibly be used for communication, escapement, or self-harm – shoelaces, belt, even the receipt of his trip to the supermarket a few days ago which he had stuffed in the back pocket of his trousers – had thrown him in the same cell as Roger, just so he could hug him (as far as possible now that his hands were cuffed together) and tell him that he wasn’t alone. He knew it was impossible; one of the policemen had already informed him that they were going to be given a restriction order as soon as the law would allow this to happen, but Brian simply couldn’t get rid of the desire to be with his boyfriend and console him like he always did when Roger needed it.

Brian awoke from his thoughts when he heard footsteps in the distance. His first instinct was to jump up and peer through the small gap in the door – the side of half a mailbox opening, just big enough for the guards to see if he was still alive and well, as far if he could be at the time being – but he opted against it, being too tired and emotionally drained to stand up. He was feeling disillusioned already, and he was sure that getting up wasn’t going to relieve the feeling of weakness and dizziness - it would probably just make it worse. On top of that, if there was someone coming his way, he didn’t want to come across as afraid, emotionally broken, and desperate; he hoped to preserve his dignity as much as possible by acting as calmly and fearlessly as he could at the moment. Even more so, he was determined not to give in to the establishment that deemed his relationship to be ‘inappropriate,’ ‘an atrocity in the eyes of God,’ ‘a threaten to society,’ and most of all ‘a reason to spend years behind bars.’

The footsteps were nearing and nearing until they stopped in front of his cell; the rattling of keys announced that it was a guard who had arrived. Without looking up, Brian could feel a pair of eyes glued on him, glaring at him through the aforementioned gap in the door. Unintelligible murmur was being exchanged with the person standing next to the first guard, possibly a second guard, before the person talked to him. 

‘Mister Brian May, the detective and his team are ready for the interrogation,’ he informed him, and Brian toyed with the idea of turning his head around and nodding, but eventually chose not to do this. Whether he agreed or disagreed, he was going to be dragged out of this room and thrown into a probably even more threatening room anyway, so a reaction was not truly relevant. He therefore simply waited for the guards to unlock the door and slowly, cautiously made their way inside. Brian assumed this was because they couldn’t predict his behaviour; his quietness and immovability might as well be a façade instead of an attempt to appear in perfect control - which he apparently managed pretty well, so far.

‘Would you stand up, please,’ the guard asked, though it wasn’t a real question – it was a demand that had to be executed whether Brian liked it or not, so he begrudgingly stood up and waited for the two guards to enter his cell, undo the handcuffs only to refasten them with his hands on his back instead of on his front, and take him with them out of the room, though the long, greyish halls of the cell block. They passed numerous steel doors that all had to be opened- and locked separately, a time-consuming task that gave Brian just a little more unwanted minutes to think about what was going to happen to him, and mainly to Roger, next.

They eventually ended up at the reception hall of the police station, the place where he had been taken in that morning, which now served as an crossover place; the guards handed him over to two new wardens and exchanged a few sentences with both them and the other two men in police uniform standing next to them. Their voices were low and somewhat derisive, and Brian only caught the last sentences of their somewhat frightening but mainly infuriating words.

‘Go back to you post, Edward, I’ll take it from here.’

‘Don’t hesitate to tell us if you need assistance. You know, this kind of person around those young wardens of yours… I wouldn’t want anything to happen to them.’

‘That won’t be necessary. I’ll make sure he won’t assault anyone. You ought to know me by now – I’ll have him under my thumb in no time. Ain’t that right, lad?’

Brian felt a rather painful tug at his handcuffs, and he got the idea that the question was aimed at him. He looked up at the person who had spoken to him, finding one of the men – possibly the detective himself, given that he seemed to be at the top of the hierarchy from all of the officers standing around him – smiling wickedly at him. It was one of the most frightening smiles Brian had ever seen; it was a malicious grin, matched with a strange glint in his dark eyes, as if he was looking straight through him, trying to determine how he was going to handle him. How he was going to _break_ him, rather. And though Brian was determined not to give in, he started to doubt his own mental strength when he looked at this guy’s self-satisfaction and determination.

‘Good luck, mate. This one looks tough to me. Not very talkative.’

‘I’ve done this for twenty years in a row now. Even if it will take sleep deprivation and white noise, I’ll get a confession out of him that will land him behind bars for a few years,’ Brian heard the man promise, and he felt like he was going to be sick.

‘I count on you, Joe. Don’t disappoint me on this.’

‘Do I ever?’ the man laughed, a highly unpleasant, self-satisfied barking sound, tugging Brian towards an adjacent hallway in the meanwhile. Brian only just managed not to trip over his own feet, both a result of the sudden movement and the queasiness that had started to wash over him. The thought of being pulled through hours-lasting interrogations, sleep deprivation, and white noise made him shiver deep inside, but it was the ear-shattering cry from a voice he recognised very well, that made his heart stop beating for a second and made him still his movements, almost making one of the guards trip over him.

‘What’s wrong with you?!’ was those irritated reaction, but Brian could hardly hear it – now when the his suspicions turned out to be true. The voice he had heard belonged to Roger, who he now saw stumbling into the hallway, writhing and twisting to escape the grip of his guards, who in response only gripped tighter onto his handcuffed wrists and dragged him along with them.

‘Oh my God-’ was all Brian managed to utter, staring in disbelief at the sight of his boyfriend, handcuffed and completely at the fingertips of the police officers behind him. His eyes filled with tears at the very realisation that there was nothing he could do for him, having his own hands tied together and being kept in place by two guards himself. He couldn’t run off to him, hold him, kiss him, tell him it was going to be alright – not just because he physically wasn’t able to at the moment, but also because he really was afraid things weren’t going to be alright this time around.

‘Brian!’ Roger cried out the moment his boyfriend caught his eyes, trying to tear away from the two guards, who in response unfortunately only tightened their grip around his arms. Brian felt his stomach turn when he looked at Roger – eyes red and swollen, cheeks wet with tears, chest rising and falling with every sob, body trembling all over. But the worst thing of all was undoubtedly the shocking red colour of blood gushing from his nose; it dripped down his lips and his chin, stained his shirt, left a trail of sticky red liquid behind on the grey tiled floor.

‘Roger, what happened? What did they do to you?’ he asked breathlessly, but Roger was too caught up in helpless sobs to reply.

‘We just did what all of you fags deserve,’ one of the guards spat out , the cruelness of his words making Brian take a step back. The people around him tried to extract Roger from his partner’s view by dragging him into one of the rooms surrounding them, but Roger was determined not to let this happen, helplessly kicking his legs and twisting his arms to complicate the task for the already unamused guards. Roger received a few more unkind words from them and was then thrown into the nearest room available, the door  being shut and locked before Brian even could get himself together and say anything more to him.

‘Don’t worry. That probably won’t happen to you if you just do as we tell you,’ one of the officers informed him, but Brian was too caught up in the sight of the traces of blood Roger’s bleeding nose had left behind on the gre

grey tiles of the floor, to hear this ill-hidden threat to their basic human rights.

# # #

‘Lock the door,’ the officer ordered to no one in general when they had arrived at what Brian suspected was their destination, slightly impatiently waiting for the two young policemen to plant Brian down on the tip-up chair in front of his impressive looking desk, after which one of them kept his hands firmly on Brian’s shoulders while the other locked the iron door of the small, dusky room. It looked quite a lot like the movies, Brian decided: room made of dark grey bricks, no windows, nothing on the walls; it contained the aforementioned desk with two chairs on the side across from him and the one on which he was sitting. The room was scarcely lit by a single lightbulb hanging from the middle of the ceiling; no one had even taken the effort to cover it off with a decent glass ceiling light. He assumed all of this was all part of their goal to make suspects feel small and uncomfortable, and Brian was sure that if he hadn’t known that this was all on purpose, they would have reached their goal.  

‘You can take off the manacles now that the door has been locked,  Jacob,’ the officer said with a nod towards one of his henchmen, who was standing about a metre behind Brian. ‘That is, if he can keep his hands to himself with all these men around,’ he taunted, making everyone in the room – apart from Brian and the person who had been assigned the task to free his hand – laugh. Brian glared up at the man, for the first time really taking a moment to drink in the sight of him. It was a man of average height, certainly multiple inches smaller than he was, but at the same time at least twice as heavy as he, which made him look impressive and frightening despite his lack of height. Brian estimated him to be in his mid-forties; a balding, overweight workaholic who probably preferred spending his evenings at the office rather than with his family, if he had one in the first place. He didn’t seem like a kind man in general, Brian judged after thinking over the comments and prejudices he had been enduring so far; he rather hoped the man didn’t have a family, because if he did, he would feel rather sorry for the poor wife and possible children.

Then again, his family life was none of Brian’s business. All Brian was concerned with, was what the man was going to do to him now, what he was going to tell him, whether that was going to land him in jail, and mostly, where Roger was and how he was doing.

‘Yes? Will you manage not to touch anyone? Even with handsome young men like Jacob and Eric standing right behind you?’ the officer asked with a lingering grin on his face, disrupting Brian from his thoughts. Derisive laughter filled the room again, but Brian naturally didn’t join in. Without glancing sideways to see who was standing behind him and currently unlocking the iron chains that forced his hands together in the first place, Brian stared unamusedly at his questioner, having to oppress the tendency to huff out an indignant bark of laughter. As if he would ever even _look_ at anyone else besides Roger.

‘I take that as a yes,’ the man eventually snickered, sounding like he was getting tired of his suspect already. ‘Silence is consent, after all.’ he said, looking up at Brian, who did not glance back at him. He was more occupied with massaging the inside of his left wrist; even though he had pretty thin arms, the guards had pulled the manacles rather tightly around his wrist, leaving red marks all around the place where his hand joined his arm. The scratches stung a little, and Brian licked his forefinger before pressing it against his wrist, rubbing the small drops of blood from the damaged skin.

‘Silence is consent. Isn’t that how the phrase goes?’ the detective repeated a little more insistently this time. Brian had no idea if this was his attempt to start a conversation with the moderate social skills he possessed, but he surely wasn’t feeling like answering him after having been made fun of by him just second ago.

‘Alright then, sourpuss,’ the detective sighed, which Brian realised might have been funny another time, another place – like those few times Roger had jokingly called him that when he had been too serious and too focussed on his academic career for the drummer’s liking. ‘Maybe you’ll feel better when we get a little more familiar, because I have to admit that it’s pretty uncomfortable talking to each other without even knowing each other’s name. My name is officer Joseph Marks, suspect interrogator. I’ll be leading this interrogation, and let me tell you - you’re not going anywhere before you’ve told me everything I want to know about you and the fellow suspect,’ he informed him, voice turning dark towards the end of the sentence. It made Brian flinch inwardly to hear someone refer to Roger as ‘his fellow suspect’; he was his boyfriend, his partner, the person he loved most. Roger meant the world to him, not to say that he _was_ his whole world; he didn’t deserve to be treated like a criminal.

‘Then there’s officer McAllen, recorder,’ officer Marks continued. ‘He will write down everything you say. Everything you say can _and_ most certainly will be held against you.’ Brian knew he was legally obliged to inform him of this possibility; the way he twisted the words into something that was closer to a threat than a warning, just didn’t exactly make him feel comfortable. It did however strengthen his intention to say as less as possible, though.

‘And finally, Jacob and Eric, our suspect guards. They will make sure you won’t go anywhere. They’re armed, so you better be careful.’

 _As if I was planning to break through a locked steel door or a fucking concrete wall,_ Brian thought dimly as he finally gave himself the chance to turn around and see who was standing behind him, not exactly feeling comfortable with not having seen the faces of the people who might end up shooting  him, if it was up to officer Marks. He looked up to see two young men, hardly any older than he was himself, standing with their legs rather wide apart and their hands on their back against the back wall of the office. Their position was probably meant to come across as powerful, but to Brian it just looked boastful, a perfect example of unnecessarily trying to be manly, and a waste of energy, given that he wasn’t planning on moving even a finger. One of them, the taller one, stared straight past him, probably not thinking he was worth being looked at. The smaller one, a boy with short, brown hair, which at the back was covered by what Brian assumed was a yarmulke, gave Brian a bit of a compassionate smile, which he returned as much as possible before he faced the questioner again.

‘So that’s us. McAllen, Jacob, Eric, and me. And what is your name?’ he asked, as if he had not been informed about the exact details of the case he had been given, even though Brian was sure that officer Marks already knew _everything_ about him. He knew the police had already sorted out all of both his and Roger’s personalia the moment they had showed up at his door that morning to arrest him – their address, their school, their relationship, so something simple like their name certainly should be no mystery to this detective. Not feeling like answering for this reason, Brian gave a quick nod towards the file that was prominently lying in the middle of his desk, wordlessly telling officer Marks to look it up in the dossier if he had forgotten his name already.

‘Okay then, I’ll look it up. I didn’t know homosexuals were so hard to get. I thought they just jumped right onto everything they could get,’ officer Marks said in what seemed to be an attempt to provoke him into saying something. Brian, however, did not allow him the pleasure of feeling like he was succeeding in making him angry, so he just kept his face straight and his mouth shut while the man in front of him opened the folder. ‘Let’s see… Brian Harold May. Born on July 19, 1947, to Harold and Ruth May in Hampton, London. No siblings. Went to Hampton Grammar School, attained three A-Levels in Physics, Mathematics and Applied Mathematics, and now studies physics at the Imperial College London…’ officer Marks summed up, and Brian didn’t know if he had to be surprised by the investigation skills of the police, or if he had to be frightened to know that people could find such information about him. ‘Your parents must be really proud of your achievements, I assume. They’ll probably be devastated to hear that their only child was arrested for gross indecency, those poor people.’

Brian bit down his lip, because _damn_ , that comment stung badly. He had not yet had the courage to think about what his parents would think about his detention on the ground of homosexual contacts. They thought Roger was just a friend, someone he had met at university, who he naturally spent a lot of time with, given that they played music together. He was sure it had never even crossed their minds that he possibly could have been having romantic feelings for Roger, let alone that these sentiments were actively being reciprocated in the relationship they had started months ago.

To hear about their son’s secret homosexual relationship would most definitely come as a huge shock to them, and Brian wondered if his parents already knew about this specific case brought up against him. When he had been arrested that morning, the two police officers who had showed up at their house had simply said that he was under arrest on the suspicion of gross indecency, which was a term that could be used for many criminal offences. No further explanation had been given to his parents, given that the both men had simply handcuffed him and thrown him in the back of the police car without answering questions from his confused father and crying mother. He had not been given the chance to phone them or notify them in any other way, and at the moment, he was kind of happy that he didn’t have to talk to them yet, simply because he had no idea how to bring them the news. He knew his mother was going to be devastated and his father was going to be repulsed of the idea of being with another man. But even more so, they would be so disappointed in him. As officer Marks had just pointed out, he was their only son; their only chance of success, the one who had to do everything right, and mainly his father was going to be furious at him for ruining his chance of a decent career.

Brian hung his head, nervously biting on the inside of his cheek while his mind spun to come up with a way to tell his parents what he was being accused of without completely infuriating or mentally breaking them down. However, he was not given the time to think in silence; a firm slap against the surface of the desk just in front of him disrupted him from his thoughts. He looked up to see the detective stare back at him, and Brian swallowed painfully. The man looked at him thoroughly, bending forwards to get a closer view of him, squinting his eyes, staring deeply enough to discover his blood type, it seemed to Brian, who could no longer look back at him and chose to stare down at his shoes instead. He wished he could have locked eyes with the detective a little longer, but he was feeling too uneasy to do so. He couldn’t stand the quietness in the room, the awkwardness, being observed by too many pairs of eyes, the dependence on whatever this detective was going to say.

When the detective finally spoke to him after having observed him for a way too long lasting minute, he leant back in his chair and casually shared his judgements with the rest of the people in the room. ‘You don’t look like a homosexual to me, kid. Not that I doubt that you are. I just always thought your sort was more flamboyant and dramatic, whereas you’re more… quiet and distant.’

 _Guess why that is,_ Brian thought to himself. _As if you would strut around like the Queen of England while basically being held prisoner by four officers in the interrogation room of the police office._

Naturally, he didn’t say any of this, and ended up raising his shoulders, unfortunately not brave enough to look the officer in the eyes while doing so. The man didn’t even seem to notice this, though. He seemed far too busy uttering more nonsensical stereotypes, making Brian wonder if he actually believed the nonsense he said himself, or if he just said them to see if he could provoke some kind of reaction from his suspect.

‘I thought your kind was supposed to grow moustaches and walk around in leather clothes and meet at secret underground gay clubs, not at universities. I thought a university student would know better than to get involved in this whole homosexual movement that’s been terrorising the country since a decade or so,’ officer Marks pondered out loud, looking at Brian again as if to see if attacking his intelligence or the group he considered himself part of might hit a sensitive note of his suspect. While it did hut him, Brian managed very well not to let this show, and stay completely sound- and motionless instead.

‘But then again, you’re not the only one who apparently risks his career for an affair. The other kid, what was his name again? Long blond hair, blue eyes, voice like a whiny six year old girl, dressed in clothes I hope to be his sister’s and not his own, kind of effeminate in general…’ The man waved his hand in an indistinct gesture, waiting for someone else to give him the name he was looking for. ‘Come on, someone must know. The other one we arrested this morning. Long haired hippie type. Edward mistook him for a girl. Barely out of childhood; probably hasn’t stopped crying for his mommy yet.’

People around Brian started laughing at this description of the person who was just another suspect in this battle against the ‘homosexual movement that had been terrorising the country,’ whereas to Brian, the long haired hippie type was the most important person in the world. To hear the police officers make fun of Roger for crying about being arrested, made Brian boil over with anger inside, and he clenched his hands into a fist beneath the desk. He could not understand how anyone felt entitled to laugh about the arrest of two true lovers, simply because they happened not to be the traditional boyfriend-and-girlfriend couple everyone was so desperate for. He wanted to stand up from his chair and lash out towards this despicable mister Marks with the fist he had made beneath the table. He naturally opted not to do this, because he knew he wouldn’t stand a chance against the armed guards who stood behind him to monitor every movement he made, and because he didn’t want to give in to the provocative rubbish Marks was uttering to make him break inside.

When the laughter faded and the silence remained, it was Brian who helped him out; even though he hated to finally give in by speaking to him, he could no longer oppress the need to give the boy who had just been described most disrespectfully by that douchebag of an officer a name.

‘Roger,’ Brian mumbled forlornly, noticing how this was the first time in forever that speaking the name of his boyfriend didn’t make his heart flutter and his knees grow weak with secret excitement; it made him fill with grief, fear, and powerlessness. Apart from knowing that he must be somewhere in this building as well, Brian had no idea how he was doing, if he was being locked up in a two-by-two metre cell, or if he was currently being interrogated by the same kind of awful people as he was at the moment. Not knowing all of this made him go out of his mind, and all he could do was inwardly pray that whoever was going to question his partner, was going to be kinder to him than the idiot he had been assigned to.

‘Look at that, you can talk!’ the officer said, relief and triumph audible in his usually mocking voice, which unfortunately soon returned when he turned to his recorder to say: ‘Write that down, Ian, because I think we’ll be writing history with this. The first word our suspect spoke: the name of the person who got him here. Ain’t that pathetic,’ officer Marks drooled in a fruitless attempt to tease Brian, who simply faced the other way until he heard the man speak the name of his lover again. ‘Anyway, this Roger, I could tell straight away that he was gay. The hair, the clothes, the way he speaks and moves… it’s just all too obvious. It’s a bloody miracle no one’s ever turned him in.’

‘Maybe that’s because being gay isn’t prosecutable; only practicing homosexuality is. We can’t arrest people for their thoughts, sir.’ It was the soft voice of one of the two suspect guards, and judging by the impression the two young men had left behind on him during the short moment he had been looking at them, Brian guessed it was the boy who had smiled at him.

‘I know,’ the detective waved the comment away, even though Brian questioned if he could actually tell the difference between practicing and non-practicing gay people. ‘I just wish we could arrest men for thinking about other men. Just the thought of men fantasising about other men the way they’re supposed to do about women… it makes me nauseous,’ officer Marks told them, face turning into a grimace of disgust. ‘Such people don’t belong in a decent society like this.’

Brian narrowed his eyes slightly, finding it starting to get harder and harder not to slam his fist down the desk and telling the man to shut up at once. The feeling of anger boiling inside of him was rather a surprise to himself; he was usually calm and collected, maybe irritated by peoples’ ignorance at the very most, no matter what people said or did. But this was a different situation. That some national institution had given itself the right to arrest and possibly imprisoning Roger and him for simply loving each other was worse enough; that these people, who were supposed to strive and fight for justice and safety, were in charge of him and could completely determine what to do with him now, had chosen to use their position to lock up, taunt, laugh at, degrade, insult, belittle, and God knew what more was yet to come to him and his boyfriend, was something that made Brian angrier than he could ever imagine being.

‘But what I wanted to say, it seems like you’re not putting yourself out there like this Roger. Unfortunately for you, that couldn’t save you from being caught anyway,’ the detective smiled scornfully at him. ‘You know, lad, whether it’s obvious or less obvious that you’re gay, we will find people like you sooner or later. You might try to hide it, but there will always be people who notice that you’re breaking the law. So just most like murderers, rapists, paedophiles, burglars, or whatever kind of criminals who think they’ve managed to hide their secret from the outside world, will be discovered eventually. It was just a matter of time before we would find you.’

Brian wanted to scream by now; he wanted to scream that it made absolutely no sense to compare two consensual, devout lovers to criminals of the same calibre as murderers, rapists, paedophiles, or God knew what more people out there were capable of. But this man, this piece of arrogance, seemed too stupid and too ignorant to tell the difference between an apple and a banana, so he knew it surely was no use explaining him the difference between sexual orientations and sexual offences, given that the law in his situation thought the first category was part of the second.

‘And now you’re here, safely locked away from the outside world, like you should be. Isn’t this much better for all of us?’ officer Marks asked bittersweetly, seeming encouraged by the way Brian squinted his eyes at him. ‘Come on, lad. You’re supposed to be a clever boy, going to university and all that... Of course, no criminal ever thinks he’s guilty or wants to go to jail, but be honest with yourself,’ officer Marks said as he stood up from his chair and casually started sauntering around the limited amount of free space behind his desk. ‘Be objective. People like you form a threat to children, young boys specifically, to family values, to God knows what more. You should be protected from society just as much as society should be protected from you.’

There were so many things Brian wanted to say; so many prejudices he wanted to fight and debunk. _I am not a criminal. I would never rob, abuse, murder, or rape anyone. I above all would never hurt a child. I would never even think about getting romantically or physically close to a minor. All I want is to be with Roger, simply because I love him and because he loves me. Our relationship is based on love, care, and mutual respect just as much as heterosexual relationships are. Why can’t you accept that? Why can’t you let us live our lives, just like we let you live yours?_

In the end, he ended up keeping this whole flood of thoughts to himself. Sensibility and vulnerability were not going to work with this man; the only thing that might have an effect on him was treating him just as coldly as he was treating the people who had been submitted to his authority.

‘Just tell me what you want from me,’ Brian therefore eventually hissed.

‘You want to know what I want from you?’ officer Marks suddenly turned around and shamelessly parroted him. ‘Is that what you want?’

‘I would not have asked for it if I didn’t want to know it. Sir,’ Brian added the last word, hoping his sarcastic comment would be tolerated this way. While he felt like he stood above the game the officers were playing with him, he still realised that they held an enormous amount of power over him to do exactly as they pleased, while he could do practically nothing in return.

‘Okay then, I’ll tell you what I want from you,’ officer Marks promised darkly as he plumped down on his bureau chair again, the wheels creaking beneath his weight. He opened the dossier that had been lying in front of him and flicked through the endless pages until he found a handful of papers he probably had been looking for, taking them out and smacking them down right in front of Brian.

‘Here you are. What we have here is you, legally still a minor, being under the suspicion of gross indecency, in this case committed through a homosexual relationship with a fellow legal minor. There are pictures taken of you two together, there are multiple eyewitnesses who recall having seen you two in situations way too intimate to be purely amicable, there _certainly_ is no use denying any of the evidence, so what I want from you is a confession.’

Brian would almost have been surprised by officer Mark’s sudden intellectual choice of words, if it weren’t for the fact that he was too busy studying the papers that had been thrown at him. He brought his shaking hands up to look at the handwritten testimonies, stationaries he did not recognise; it literally could have been anyone. Had it been teachers who had noticed? Students who had seen them together in the hallways? Their fellow band members who knew the two of them practiced together in private? Kitchen staff who saw them sitting next to each other in the canteen at lunch time? Janitors and gardeners who saw them walking home together every day?

‘Multiple people confirmed that they have seen you together – in an abandoned classroom, at the cafeteria, at the lavatory, doing God knows what,’ the interrogator grimaced. ‘Read what people write. We’ve highlighted the most important parts,’ Brian’s opponent said, pointing at the places Brian was supposed to read. And though he didn’t want to read them, Brian found himself drawn to the papers. He had to know what people said about them; he had to know if their observations were true or if they were fantasies, products of the fear this society seemed to feel towards people they expected to be gay.

_They are always together, even though they have no reason to be, since they don’t do the same study and are not even in the same year._

That was fair, Brian had to admit. To outsiders, there indeed was no reason for them to be together as much as they were; they didn’t follow the same classes and were not in the same year. But that didn’t meant they couldn’t be good friends; he knew more people from his class who were best friends with students from other courses, so this should not be a reason to suspect them of homosexuality.

_They are always too close to each other. They practically sit on top of each other at lunchtime._

Brian decided that this was a bit of an exaggeration, given that they would always be very careful to avoid getting too close to each other. They would always make sure not to walk too closely to each other, leave some space between them when they stood next to their locker, and when they were in the cafeteria, library, or study room, they would always either leave one chair between each other or sit across from each other. Whoever had written that they practically sat on top of each other during lunch time, obviously saw things that weren’t there.

_I was sitting next to Roger in prosthodontic class a few weeks ago and I saw him writing some kind of love letter to someone he called ‘Brian.’_

Brian frowned as he reread the sentence to make sure he had seen it right, finding it more than just a little unsettling to find out that he had. The first person certainly had seemed right; the second one was a bit exaggerated, but this third person’s statement was simply highly unlikely. Roger and he both knew how dangerous it was to possess written evidence of their relationship, especially close at hands to the people who might use it for the wrong reasons when they would find out. They had therefore agreed that they wouldn’t write, read, or pass notes to each other in public. They wrote their letters at home, carried them to school, and stuffed them in the other’s backpacks when no one was looking.  Extra precautionary measures included always writing in capital letters so that no one could recognise their stationary, always sign their letters with a girl’s name, and always hiding notes and letters in a blank envelope, all of this just to reduce the risk of someone finding out that they sent each other letters.

Because of all these safety measures, it seemed incredibly unlikely to Brian that someone had seen Roger writing a love letter in public to someone he addressed as ‘Brian’. Surely, Roger liked to play things risky, but Brian was willing to bet all his money that his partner would never put the both of them in unnecessary danger by writing notes to his male lover in a classroom full of people.

_I saw them in an abandoned classroom once, and I’m almost positive they were kissing._

This last statement made Brian snort involuntarily and shove the paper away for a bit, because he was sure as hell that no such thing had ever happened. They had never been in an abandoned classroom with just the two of them, and even if they would have been, they would never use such a public space like that for romantic display of any kind. They were very cautious in public and would never touch each other, whisper in each other’s ear, or even hug each other in the possible presence of others, simply because it was way too risky. Even when they were all alone, for example in their own bedroom, they would still lock the door and shut the curtains and sit down somewhere on the floor, where their silhouettes could not be seen from the window, before Brian would most take Roger’s hands in his own, most cautiously press a kiss against his cheek, and keep his voice down while telling him how much he had missed him during the day. This last testimony was the opposite of how they ruled, and therefore was the biggest nonsense Brian had heard in quite a while.

‘What do you say about that, lad? The evidence seems pretty solid, doesn’t it?’

 _These are lies, blatant, vicious lies,_ Brian wanted to sneer, but he simply wasn’t in the mood to open his mouth, so he ended up aimlessly raising his shoulders while staring at the papers, mumbling something along the lines of ‘none of this is true’.

‘Well, if that doesn’t convince you, this most certainly will,’ the detective boasted. A handful of new papers were thrown down in front of Brian, and he reached out a hand to collect them. These papers were of smaller format than the first A4-sized he had been given; these were about five by five inches, square-formed, and didn’t contain letters, but seemed to capture an image of a few people. Brian turned them upside down and felt his heart sink the moment he realised that those people he was looking at, were, in fact, Roger and him, standing in the alley between two of the university buildings, the place they met up when they wanted to see each other in lonely hours. Brian could not exactly determine when this picture had been taken, what time it had been, but he could clearly see that it was them; the messy tresses of Roger’s blond hair, his own dark brown curls – he could even recognise his own face in the somewhat blurred picture. It was unmistakably him, backed against the wall with Roger standing in front of him, hands loosely clutching at his sides. Even if he could come up with a way to rebuke the written testimonies of anonymous witnesses, he could not escape the evidence brought against them by just the very existence of these polaroids.

‘Who took these?’ Brian managed after a while, heart pounding and cheeks glowing.

‘Someone who wishes to stay anonymous,’ officer Marks told him.

 _Of course they do,_ Brian thought to himself. _Fucking coward. Has the courage to turn us in, but not to let us show their face. Probably afraid they’ll catch homosexuality if they comes too close to us._

‘They had no right to take photos of us,’ Brian hissed.

‘And you had no right to get involved with another man,’ officer Marks snapped back. ‘The right to privacy will immediately be cancelled when images of suspects can lead to successful arrests, like they did in this case. We’re really rather thankful for the mister or miss who send us these.’

‘I bet you are,’ Brian growled, feeling violated and betrayed by the fact that some douchebag that was most likely no have never shared a word with them, would secretly take pictures of them and turn them in to the police without wanting to show his own face. It was the single most coward action Brian had ever heard.

‘Seriously, we are thankful. Decent, law-abiding civilians are our biggest support in the whole quest for homosexuals. It’s impossible for us to catch all of you perverts on our own; we need the help of our citizens to arrest your sort, put you behind bars, and cleanse our society-’

Brian let out an indignant snort halfway the officer’s monologue, no longer able to silently listen to whose insane words. He had always known there were homophobes that were convinced that homosexuality was a wrong, a disease, punishment from the heavens above them, something that needed to be oppressed and ruled out, but he had never met someone in person who was as fierce about these opinions as the man who was currently preaching to him. He would have laughed about his ignorance and stupidity if it hadn’t been this _sad_ to listen to a grown man whining about cleaning society of a group of people that did not affect his nor anyone else’s life in any negative way.

‘What’s so funny?’ officer Marks asked indignantly once he realised that his suspect wasn’t paying attention to him anymore.

‘It’s you. You are funny,’ Brian said with ill-hidden disdain. ‘You and this whole national company of _idiots_ that views same sex partners as a huge threat in the middle of a cold war. The USSR and the USA might start a nuclear war any moment. There is war in Vietnam. Even here, in London – people are being robbed, stalked, murdered, women are being raped, children are being abused, and what do you focus on? What does this whole institute waste its time and the tax money we all pay on? Two students that have fallen in love,’ Brian said bitterly, glancing sideways.

‘It’s not ‘ _love_ ,’ the officer spat out the word, as if it had a bad taste to it. ‘Whatever you two feel for each other can impossibly be classified as ‘love.’ It’s an abnormality, a disease, a mental illness…’

‘So you also put people with depression in jail for having a mental disorder?’ Brian asked sharply. ‘People with cancer for having a disease? People with schizophrenia for-’

Brian was harshly interrupted by officer Marks, who stood up and slammed his fist down the table loudly enough to make everyone in the room jump up in shock.

‘Enough!’ he shouted at Brian, pointing his finger at him as to reprove a five year old who would not stop talking in class. He bent towards him, but Brian refused to back away from him now; he simply looked at him with coy yet provocative eyes, waiting for whatever the man had to say to him to defend his previous statement. Unfortunately for the officer, his argument about homosexuality being a mental disease, which Brian had twisted into people-with-mental-illnesses-belong-in-prison, had been too stupid to put right, so he ended up growling: ‘Enough. You shut up, or I’ll... I’ll…’

‘Or what? Will you call the cops on me?’ Brian asked coyly.

‘Quiet!’ His counterpart leant over and grasped the collar of his shirt, pulling Brian towards him. His squinted eyes were dangerously close to Brian’s when he said: ‘I’m giving you one more chance, kid, before I won’t be so kind anymore.’

‘At what point exactly were you being kind?’ Brian inquired calmly, getting the hang of it by now. He heard a soft chuckle behind him; one of the guards must have found the remark rather funny as well. Unfortunately but not unexpectedly, the detective furiously looked up at the source of quiet laughter, and it soon fell quiet.

‘Not a word. Not a single fucking word,’ officer Marks hissed at Brian when he had brought his attention back to him, before he hard-handedly pushed him back into his chair.

Brian refashioned the crumpled collar of his shirt, deciding that it had been enough for now; both because he should not lower himself to the standards of the officer, and because he was unsure what the man was going to do to him if he continued teasing him. Naturally, he knew he had basic human rights, even as a suspect of a legal offense, but the question was if the officer was going to respect these as well. And given that Brian was aware of the fact that he was going to be stuck with the godawful man for what was likely going to be most of the day, it was probably not a bad idea not to anger him unnecessarily. So Brian sighed, nodded, and almost felt relieved when the officer finally led him into the actual interrogation.

# # #

Brian had never known that the history of- and events within Roger and his relationship, which after all had only started a few months ago, could take so much time to recall; explaining everything from the moment they had first met until the last time they had been in touch, turned out to be taking literal hours and hours. He had decided to be honest about everything and not to hide things they explicitly asked for; after all, they were at the time, or they were planning to, ask Roger the exact same questions, and Brian figured that they would be in rather big troubles if their stories differed too much.

Brian felt himself starting to grow weary after a few hours, not answering questions about the letters they wrote and the music they played together in Roger’s apartment after school as accurately and extensively as he did before, after a while not even hearing the sarcastic and patronising comments the officer felt like making all the time anymore.  All he could think of was getting away from the dusky room, to go home and sleep, sleep until this nightmare was over. It was for this reason that he was glad and thankful when he saw officer Marks closing his dossiers and heard the hands of the recorder stopping to touch the keys of the typewriter, wordlessly telling him it was over.

‘Alright, that’s about it for today,’ officer Marks announced, and Brian, face pale and expressionless from tiredness by now, nodded. ‘We’ll bring you back to your cell. You have the right to one telephone call, by the way. Perhaps you’d like to call a lawyer, or disappoint your parents or so. Knowing you, I guess you’ll pick the last option.’

Brian, by now having gotten used to ignoring the officer’s disdainful words, simply replied: ‘No, I don’t want to phone my parents. They don’t have to get involved in this.’

‘Very sorry to break your bubble there, lad, but you’re under twenty-one. We’ve already informed your parents to tell them you’ll have to stay here the night,’ the officer said, all of which was new to Brian; he had been hoping that they hadn’t told is parents, since he was older than eighteen, but it seemed like the minimum age for privacy was twenty-one in this case. He also had been hoping he would be allowed to leave after this soul-rending interrogation, but apparently, the people here had other plans in mind for him. ‘You might want to call them and explain the situation. Try to save whatever’s left to save,’ he said with a scornful smile.

‘I’d rather not,’ Brian replied most calmly.

‘You sure about that?’ a new voice asked, and Brian looked up to see the recorder look at him. He had not yet heard the man speak; all he had done during the interrogations was nod, hum, or shake his head when the detective had been asking him questions. Not once had he said something to him or looked at him; all he had done was typing out his words as quickly as he managed and laugh whenever his boss made yet another stupid comment towards his sexual preferences.

‘Hm-hmm,’ Brian hummed distantly, not in the mood to talk to the man.

‘I’m sure they have lots of questions. They’re probably worried sick by now; they hardly know why you’re here in the first place,’ the recorder reminded him.

‘Do they know it’s because of Roger and me?’ Brian asked.

‘Yes, they do.’

‘Great. That’s all they need to know,’ Brian decided.

‘That still leaves you one phone call,’ the man reminded him, and Brian sighed. He was not exactly in the mood for more interference with his choices at the moment, and even less to talk to anyone right now and be expected to explain the situation.

‘Call prime minister Wilson on my behalf and ask him to repeal the ban on homosexuality already, alright?’ Brian replied a little crankier than he had intended to do. He felt kind of bad about verbally lashing out at the officer, knowing he wasn’t responsible for the words of his co-worker, but he couldn’t bring himself to apologise at the moment; not in front of officer Marks, who snorted in amusement after hearing Brian’s suggestion of what they should do with the phone call.

‘Keep dreaming, lad. You’ll have all the time in the world to do that in your cell tonight,’ officer Marks grinned, grabbing Brian’s shoulder and pushing him towards the suspect guards. ‘Take him back and bring in the other. I hope he’ll be more fun than this one,’ he said with one more dirty look at Brian, before he turned his back on him and had his recorder hand him a cigarette from a small red and white paper box, which Brian was pretty familiar with – Roger smoked the same brand.

The image of the pack of cigarettes was still lingering in Brian’s thoughts when Jacob and Eric carried him out of the interrogation room and guided him towards the cell unit again. Brian incidentally caught a glimpse of a clock in one of the hallways he was being dragged through, and managed to make out that it had been something past three AM, which meant that he had already been at the police station for more than seven hours. It failed to surprise him; he had first been left in a cell for literal hours, after which they had brought him over to the interrogation room to spend just as much - if not more - time in there. He hated the thought of having to spend any more time at this Godawful place, but most of all, he hated the thought of now knowing how Roger was doing. Out of one of the comments of the officer, he had been able to make up that Roger was being interrogated right after him, but this raised a whole bunch of new questions - had the bleeding nose stopped, had the bloodstains been taken off his shirt, and had it been scrubbed off the floor? Was he going to be allowed to sleep at all? Were they going to threaten or blackmail Roger, would they use his Brian’s testimony against him, would they turn physical to him again?

Brian hardly noticed the moment the guards halted in front of a police cell; even the sound of a key being inserted into a lock rather messily and the rusty steel door being opened afterwards, hardly managed to wake him up from his thoughts. It was the push Eric gave him against his shoulder to make him step inside the small room they had just acquired access to that made Brian realise where he was – or that was, that made him realise that he was at the police station and knee deep into a lot of problems, but not his direct physical location. The cell was too dark to actually see make sense out of his surroundings; the poor LED-lightning from the hallway was only just enough for Brian to make out the shape of what seemed to be a bed, and to estimate how far the walls were no more than two and a half metre apart from each other.

‘We’ll come pick you up in the morning.’

Brian turned around to face the two guardians, whose dark silhouettes he could make out in the glow from the hallway. It felt intimidating to see the two of them standing in the door opening, physical objects blocking his way to freedom, even though he knew it was not just them but laws, prejudice, and homophobia that were really preventing him from living his life like he wanted in the grand scheme of things. ‘Try to get some sleep or… whatever your kind of people do at night,’ Brian heard one of the guardians say, and it did not take a lot of time or effort to trace it back to Eric, the hostile and outspoken of the two. It surprised him how little it did to him after this time to be set apart as some kind of distinct race or even a different category of species – it was something one could apparently get used to amazingly quickly when one was in no position to fight it.

Brian gave a weak nod, not wanting to give in to yet another provocative remark or show his vulnerability to the idea of having to spend the night in this claustrophobically cramped space. Yet, once again, he knew there was nothing he would be able to do about it, so he simply silently held his breath when door in front of him cut him off from the outside world for another lonely night, leaving him behind with nothing but blinding darkness.

# # #

Even though the luxury of a bed was available to Brian at the moment, he found himself sitting on the cold, hard floor instead, with his back against the wall, eyes closed, and his left foot endlessly tapping against the steel floor below him. He couldn’t stop pondering about what was happening to Roger now that he had been admitted into the interrogation room, but it was mainly the image of his boyfriend’s bleeding nose that haunted Brian like a song stuck in his head that he was unable to get rid of, no matter how hard he tried. He could not shake of the ghastly sight of it, and the reason behind it was even more gruesome to Brian. It was so unfair; Roger didn’t deserve to be treated like this, no one deserved to be treated like this-

‘Mister May? Mister May?’

Brian opened his eyes wearily as if this would help him trace the sound back to its source, but the cell was too dark and there was no one window or other opportunity to see what was happening outside the pit he’d been thrown into. Brian therefore shrugged the sound off as a figment of his imagination - which was highly plausible, given the circumstances – and closed his eyes again, only opening them when he heard the clattering of keys and fingers tugging at the cell door, until eventually a glow of light shone across his face. Brian blinked to adjust his eyes to the poor yet sudden appearance of light, and he didn’t know if he had to be glad or terrified when a dark silhouette blocked most of the incoming light by standing in the way of the door that had just been opened.

‘Who’s there?’ he whispered with an audible trace of terror, fearing yet another ward or officer or interrogator was coming to pick him up and subject him to whatever treatment they pleased, but it soon turned out that there was no reason to panic.

‘Mister May? It’s me, Jacob. Please stay where you are,’ the ward said, and Brian nodded while he cautiously pushed himself up on his elbows to get a better view of him. He soon had to conclude that he unmistakably was who he said he was – he recognised the small posture, dark hair, and nervous fidgeting of the young warden from the hours they had spent in the interrogation room earlier that day. And, of course, who else but this seemingly tolerant guardian would come over to secretly visit Brian in the middle of the night?

Brian felt a sudden rush of both gratefulness as well protectiveness towards the person who – along with Roger – seemed to be the only one choosing his side in this entire Godforsaken building. ‘Jacob, what are you doing here? You might get yourself in trouble,’ Brian whispered, and he saw Jacob nodding before he faced down, obviously aware that what he was doing was dangerous.

‘I know. I just wanted to drop by and tell you that I’m sorry for my co-workers behaviour during the interrogation, as well as to whatever they did to Roger. You two don’t deserve to be treated like this,’ Jacob said. ‘Nor does anyone who is gay. I want you to know I’m on your side.’

‘That’s… Thank you,’ was the only thing Brian managed to say in response.

Jacob coughed softly and peered around the hallway before he continued. ‘I have a twin brother, Ezra, who is like you. If you know what I mean…’ the boy said softly, awkwardly readjusting the dark brown hair below his yarmulke. ‘No one knows about it apart from me. We’ve told no one about it – our youngest siblings are too young to understand, and the older ones are old enough to understand that it’s a bad thing in the eyes of our family and our religion. We’re Jewish, you see,’ he said, tapping against his yarmulke. Brian nodded breathlessly; he was relieved to hear Roger and he weren’t the only ones not conforming to society’s standards in this matter, but the fact that this story had to be told in a quiet whisper, far away from other people who could pose a threat to their safety if they chose to betray them, made him feel a tinge of sadness.

Suddenly shaking his head, Jacob said: ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.’

‘Because you care about your brother. You don’t want him to end up in my position,’ Brian said, and Jacob nodded, before the sound of a steel door opening and closing somewhere far away in another part of the building. Although it was not a direct threat to them, it was enough to make both men aware of their vulnerability and the risk they were taking by speaking to each other like this.

‘I have to go now; they’ll be very angry if they find me here,’ Jacob said while pulling the keys out of the pocket of his uniform, taking a step back to get ready to lock the door again, but not without adding: ‘I just want you to know I’m with you, along with a lot of people. Times are changing. I hope they’ll change fast enough to help you two out of here.’

Brian gave him a weak smile, having lost all hope of change by now but still appreciating the kind words of a boy obviously positive times were changing for the better. Just when Jacob was about to close the door behind him, Brian softly called out his name.

‘Jacob?’

‘Yes?’

‘Look after Ezra. I wouldn’t want the same to happen to him,’ Brian whispered with a touch of desperation he would have found awkward about another time another place; he didn’t even know this person, had never even heard his name or knew of his existence two minutes ago, and yet through the struggle they shared he felt a certain bond between them.

Jacob nodded forcefully as a mean of promise, after which he turned around, glancing around to see if no one had seen their secret encounter. It was a bit like Roger and him, Brian decided – always having to check if there was no one around who could possible betray you. The boy walked into hallway again, vanished behind the steel door that separated the cell block from the reception hall, and Brian sank back against the wall again, staring aimlessly at the place where the boy had appeared, until he felt his eyelids turning heavy, falling close, involuntarily dragging him down into a state of deep unconsciousness.

# # #

Brian had no idea what time it was when he woke up from his sleep, but the small strip of light shining through the barred window and illuminating the cell, told him that he had somehow gotten himself through the night. He carefully stood up from the floor he had spent the night on; he felt all his muscles protesting when he did, but he pulled through and sat himself down on the bed with what seemed to him the thinnest mattress he had ever sat on in his life. He yawned and ran a hair through his messy locks of hair, wondering what time it was, if anyone was going to pick him up anywhere soon or if they would just leave him for the rest of the day, and most of all, he wondered how Roger was going. He desperately hoped the interrogation of his partner had come to an end, that they were finally leaving Roger alone, and that the whole situation hadn’t traumatised him too much – even though Brian knew better than that. Roger had just turned eighteen and was normally a bright, bubbly, and careless teenager, but in that one moment Brian had encountered him in the hallway, there was nothing left of Roger but a broken spirit, crushed to the core by their treatment at the police station. Brian wanted nothing more than to hold him, to tell him they were in this together and that he wasn’t going to leave him no matter what anyone would say about it, but even though Roger had to be somewhere in the same building, Brian knew that reaching him was going to be an impossibility. They lived in the same city, were at the same building even at the moment, yet it felt as though they were a thousand miles apart.

By the time footsteps drew closer to the cell and the heavy steel door was opened with some of the necessary creaking, Brian had resorted to staring at the corner of the room and endlessly opening and closing the top button of his shirt. For a second, he glanced up to see who was on the other side of the door, secretly hoping it would be Jacob, but he didn’t recognise the face of the ward. He reminded himself that Jacob’s shift was probably over after all those hours he had been around to guard his interrogation, but that didn’t stop Brian from being more than a little disappointed.

Begrudgingly, he followed the kind but insistent orders of whoever this guard was, and half-heartedly listened to whose report about what was going to happen now. He managed to catch something about being allowed to go home, that Roger and he would be given a restraining order until the case would be brought to their case would be brought to court, and that he would be informed about the details of how the case would now proceed by mail later that week. Brian nodded weakly whenever he felt like he should show the guard a sign of active listening, but he only really noticed what was going on when he arrived at the hallway of the police station, where a handful of other guards were ready to clasp his hand behind his back by a pair of handcuffs and lodge him outside to one of the police cars which Brian hoped would finally bring him back home.

On second thoughts, however, he did not know whether or not he really had to be happy that he was going to be taken home again; it certainly was a relief to be out of this living hell, but he had not given a great deal of thought to how his parents would respond to the news of him having been arrested on the charge of homosexual relationships. The recorder had made it clear to him that his parents had been informed about the reason of his arrest, so there was no need for him to sit them down and explain the whole situation to them, but this did not make the insecurity towards how his parents would react to him coming home any better. Brian hoped that his mother might be relieved to have her only son back home, but his father was a completely different matter. Having heard his father’s previously anti-gay opinions, Brian did not expect much sympathy from him – in all honesty, he wondered if he would even still be allowed to come home at all if it was up to his dad.

His car door was locked from the outside – as if he could possibly open it with both hands bound together on his back, Brian thought sarcastically – and two police officers got into the front of the car. The moment the engine started and the car left the parking lot, Brian felt a knot forming in his stomach – one that only seemed to grow worse the closer they reached their final destination. By the time they actually drove into their street, Brian felt his heart pounding against his ribcage – only to feel his heart skip a beat when he saw his parents standing in the doorway of their house.

Soon enough, though, it was not only his parents standing in the doorway; doors of adjacent houses also opened, curtains were slid aside to reveal neighbours watching from behind their windows, heads of the people walking on the pavement turned to look at the police car that had arrived from out of  nowhere. When the door was opened for him, Brian hardly managed to pull himself together and step out of the car; he felt as if a million people were staring at him, judging him, whispering to each other about whatever crimes he had committed. Whether they were looking at him out of surprise about an exemplary citizen like him being brought back by the police, or whether the news about the charges had spread like wildfire and the whole street had walked out to see the return of a criminal, Brian did not know. All he knew is that he wished the entire multitude would vanish into thin air, together with the police, his charges, and the entire British law and punitive system.

However, all that vanished seemed to be the barricade between the isolated space of the car and the outer world, when one of the officers opened the car door for Brian. He had no idea if he had to be relieved or scared when the police officers finally freed him from his confinement and walked him towards his parents to hand him over to their care; not when his mother clutched a hand over her mouth the moment his handcuffed wrists caught her already teary eyes, and especially not when the dark, disapproving eyes of his father seemed to burn right through him.

Not daring to face either of his parents while standing in front of them, Brian occupied himself by thoroughly studying a few loose tiles of the garden path while one of the officers unlocked the handcuffs that had been keeping Brian captive. He felt somewhat better when that obvious sign of criminality was removed, but remembering that the entire street had still seen him in that position of captivity, soon melted the feeling of relief away. He could hear his mother’s sobbing and feel his father’s eyes burning right through him when the police officers discussed the details of his detention, charges, restraining order between Roger and him, and the upcoming trial. Somewhere during the instructions, which sounded like nothing more than buzzing to his ears, Brian felt the officer’s grip around his upper arm slacken, suggesting that they were going to return to the police station again and leave him here with his parents. His moment of freedom did not last long enough for him to enjoy, however; as soon as the officer’s hand left, it was replaced by his father’s fingers curling around Brian’s upper arm, and Brian had to oppress the urge to ask the police officers if they would  please take him back with them. Even though he dreaded his time at the police station, there were more than enough indications for Brian to believe that once the officers had left, his father was going to turn his life into a living hell even more than the punitive system had managed to do so far.

Unfortunately for Brian, the two men that had brought him home soon took their leave, leaving him behind to be confronted with the disappointment and anger of his parents. He could feel both these emotions practically radiating from their bodies, and he knew there was nothing he could really do to make the situation appear any less bad than it was.

‘Mom, Dad, I don’t… I don’t know where to start-‘

‘Get inside, now,’ his father hissed, tugging Brian along with him by the arm he had grabbed and held onto painfully tightly some moments ago, not seeing – or caring – that this almost caused Brian to trip over the threshold. All he seemed to care about was hauling him away from the embarrassment of having the entire street walk out to see the police dropping his son off home.

While his father pressed the door shut behind the pair of them, his mother left for the living room. Brian assumed she was making her way out of his presence to fetch some tissues to soothe her own tears with or anything the like, but he was soon proven wrong when his mother rushed over to the living room and returned to the hallway with the newspaper of that morning in her hands. She pointing with a shaky finger to a short paragraph in the corner of the second page, of which the headline read:

**College students arrested for homosexuality**

Brian had to close his eyes for a moment before he could pull himself together and read the rest of the accusations.

_London – the London police have reported that on the evening of October 12, two young men were arrested on the suspicion of homosexual acts and behaviour. The arrestors, one 20 and one 18 year old student from London Imperial College, are believed to have engaged in what a spokesman of the London police calls ‘immoral acts in the form of sodomy’ over a period of multiple months. The suspects have been taken into custody and are currently being interrogated-_

‘Is it true?’ his mother interrupted him when Brian was halfway through the last sentence of the paragraph. It seemed to him that it was all she managed to whisper through a haze of tears, and Brian felt so horrible that he could not respond to her instantly – not at all really, it seemed to him. He found himself being at a loss of words, unable to do anything other than staring blankly at the page in the newspapers and hoping the article, along with the entire situation. How wonderful it would be to just blink and find the whole chaos having vanished, along with all his worries, and just go back to secretly loving Roger without the world interfering with them…

‘Brian, tell me, is it… please, tell me it’s all some sort of mistake!’

It was the same fragile voice that brought Brian back to reality. This time, however, it had acquired a touch of desperation; his mother seemed to be begging for a reply by now. Brian now managed to open his mouth, but soon after closed it again, still not having found the words to answer her.

‘Answer your mother, Brian,’ his father added curtly in a voice that made Brian instantly understand that his father would no longer tolerate his silence.

‘I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry-’ was all Brian managed to plead after having cleared his throat. He didn’t know what he was hoping for; perhaps that his parents would forgive him for his deeds, that they would tell him it was okay, tell him they still loved him, even though he knew that if he did, this was not going to be the moment they were going to express these sentiments.

‘And so am I,’ his father agreed with a grown as he let go of his arm and instead curled his fingers into a first. Brian closed his eyes, knowing what was about to come, even though he had never experienced it before. He didn’t try to back out of it; he didn’t raise his hands to protect himself, didn’t jump away, didn’t plead for is father to spare him, because he knew it would be useless. All he could do was wish it would help his father deal with the feeling of anger and helplessness he knew for a fact all of them were feeling; after that, there was nothing left to do but wait. The last thing Brian sensed was his mother crying out her husband’s name before a searing pain exploded all over the right side of his face, feeling how the force of the punch was strong enough to make him stagger back against the wall behind him, before everything went black before his eyes.


	3. Chapter 3

Standing at the bus station early in the morning, Roger suddenly noticed that the days seemed to be getting shorter again already. Mid-November was coming up, accompanied by the gloomy morning darkness that was so typical of the autumn and winter that were approaching at a pace much more rapid than Roger liked to see. He had never been a big fan of either of those seasons, but it seemed that the falling leaves and the cold weather were hitting him even harder this year than they usually did, and the current rainfall wasn’t soothing the heaviness he was feeling. He leant back against the glass wall of the bus shelter, turning to the side to stare at his own reflection in the somewhat opaque looking surface. Through the raindrops that travelled down the glass, he studied the paleness of his face, the bags beneath his eyes, the overall worn-out look he could not shake off since he had been released from the police station Saturday afternoon. He slowly brought up his hand to touch his nose; it was still sensitive from his extended altercation with a police officer during the weekend, but there was no indication that it was going to start bleeding again anywhere soon, which was certainly an improvement compared to the day before. Still, just the act of brushing his fingers along the underside of his nose brought back all the memories of the horrific time he was forced to spend inside the police station, especially those memories directly related to the bleeding nose he had acquired.

How it happened was something he could not seem to recall; there had been something going on with multiple wardens, one of which was under the assumption that he was trying to break away from their grip, and thus to get him ‘back into control’ by pushing him against the nearest wall. If this, however, was the exact moment he’d been injured he could not tell for sure. What he _did_ know was that the blood was dripping down his nose, lips, and chin by the time they crossed Brian in the hallway as he was being hauled into the interrogation room that still made Roger shiver whenever he thought about it. The dimly lit room, the guards standing right behind him to watch every move he made – as far as he had the courage to move at all in that environment – and worst of all, officer Marks, who had been radiating coldness, hate, and disdain towards him from the moment he got to lay his eyes on him.

But even though he could not shake off the indescribable feeling of discomfort whenever he thought about any of these aspects of having been detained, one question continued to linger in Roger’s mind all throughout of the interrogation session, and still continued to bother him until this point in time. What effect did seeing him being pinned down by guards with his bleeding nose leaving red stains all over his clothes and the floor beneath him, leave behind on Brian? What kind of assumptions Brian make based on it sight – did he think the guards had gotten physical towards him, did he think he had been seriously injured, did the sight of him covered in blood scare him? Did it look bad enough for Brian to worry about him or fear for his safety?

In all honesty, Roger already knew the answer to all of those questions. Brian was _always_ worried about his wellbeing and his safety, and he was positive his partner had not managed to get rid of the mental image of him with blood dripping down the lower half of his face. Roger would have loved to be able to call Brian, to tell him that as far as he was concerned it had been an accident and that his nose did not seem to be broken, to tell him he didn’t have to worry about him – or at least, not to worry about that particular aspect of him. He wanted to comfort Brian, as the bleeding nose he had acquired in a twist of action with the guards was the least of his problems right now. More than that, he wanted to be comforted by Brian himself. Consoling him was one of the things Brian, with his calm and rational personality, was great at, but he at the same time realised none of this was going to be realistic, or even legal in their situation; they had been giving a restraining order until the case would go to court, and he had very little hope that they would be allowed to be in touch after they had been convicted. In the best case they would not be able to speak, write, or see each other because the restraining order would be extended; in the worst case they would not be able to stay in touch because they would be separated from each other by being put into prison.

Roger curled his fingers up into a fist and sunk his teeth into to prevent himself from breaking the soft sound of the rain falling down by literally screaming throughout the quietness of the street. It was all so unfair, so fucking _unfair_ that people were pulling them through by the use of a legal system built on narrow-minded ideas, designed- and kept in place by narrow-minded people who had never even _met_ them. People who had no _right_ to decide for the entire country whose relationship was to be seen as sane and whose was to be considered immoral, let alone to force their ideas onto everyone else by literally incarcerating those who they disagreed with-

The sound of heels clicking on the pavement was what held Roger back from the tendency to punch the glass wall behind him out of frustration. He spotted a silhouette carrying an umbrella approaching the bus shelter, and Roger turned to the side again in order not to have to face he person. The umbrella prevented him from seeing who it was, but given that it was the bus stop at the end of the street his mother lived at, chances were big that it was someone he knew; and if it was someone he knew, chances were even bigger than they had heard all about the charges he was facing. The day he had been released by the police, the news had already been spread like wildfire all over the London newspapers. Because both Brian and he were both under the age of twenty-one, no pictures of them had been shown, but rumour had started spreading and soon enough, the whole neighbourhood had found out that he was the suspect the articles spoke of. People walked by and pointed at their house the whole day, and when he went outside to do something as quick as picking up the mail from the mailbox, it felt like a million eyes of people glaring at him from behind their curtains were glued on him.

This was exactly why he had been planning to go to his student room the moment he would be admitted out in the wide world again, but because he was under the age of twenty-one, the officers insisted on dropping him off at his mother’s place, which was the _last_ place he had wanted to be at the moment. Not only could he not stand her never-ending crying about the fact that her only son turned out to be gay and about to be convicted for said fact, but he also felt like he would lose his mind if he heard one more person talking about him behind his back. For this reason, he had packed his bag early that morning, left the house before his mother or sister were even awake, and planned on staying in his student room for the remainder of the week to avoid having to face either his family or locals who could not resist the temptation of prying into other peoples’ lives. The arrival of the person he suspected to be the woman living just around the corner of the street by the looks of the remarkable emerald green coat he was sure he would even recognise in his dreams, made him realise once again how desperate he was to get away from the neighbourhood he once never could have imagined feeling so uncomfortable living in.

After a few minutes of awkward silence and exchanging glances at each other to look what the other person was doing, the bus arrived, and Roger took the opportunity to take a seat as far away from the woman – and any other travellers – away as possible. During his walk to the back of the bus, he noticed that there was no one he recognised on the public transport, which made him relax for just long enough a time to feel mildly comfortable in public for the first time. However, the closer they got to the bus stop next to which his university was located, the more nervous he started feeling, nausea building up inside him at the pure thought of having to walk around the place with probably everyone already knowing about Brian’s and his arrest.

There was only one thought that managed to make Roger stand up from his seat and get out of the bus, off to face what he was already sure of was going to be the hardest day at university he was going to experience in a long time – Brian should be walking around somewhere on the campus. Roger knew his boyfriend’s timetable by heart, and knew he had classes from nine through three today, meaning they should be able to cross their ways somewhere today. And even though they were not allowed to talk to each other, he knew that just getting to see Brian, even if it was for a few seconds and from a considerable distance, was all he needed to stay strong and resist the sneering comments and avoid the endless stares he was positive he was going to get as soon as he would arrive at school. Just any sign of Brian’s presence and - hopefully - wellbeing was all Roger needed right now, because he had not managed to catch any of that when they had crossed each other in the hallway of the police station, where each of them had been dragged off into another direction by a handful of guards.

Roger patiently waited for the people around him to leave the bus first as to give himself some more time to inspect his surroundings. The bus stop was located practically next to the university building, meaning that once he got out, he would immediately be immersed in the environment where Brian and him had met, hung out together, grown to love each other. It was a painful thought to think about right now, especially when combined with the fact that this was the environment that had betrayed the pair of them. Someone walking around here had taken those damned pictures of them that were about to lock them away into prison as soon as their case would go to court, and Roger had no idea who it had been. It could have been a random passer-by, one of the staff members, a classmate, even a friend of them. It literally could have been anyone, and Roger felt like he couldn’t trust anyone walking around at school anymore.

It seemed, however, that the feeling of distrust between him and the rest of the school was mutual. The moment he stepped out of the bus and walked his way to the premises of the university, it was as if all heads turned to look at him. Voices were whispering, fingers were pointing, and though Roger knew by experience how quickly rumours could spread - hell, he engaged in them himself often enough to call himself an expert on them - it still managed to surprise him just how many people were looking and staring and talking or giving him whatever kind of attention when he followed the pavement and walked up to the entrance of the school building. He walked through the opened iron gate to find students hanging around between the buildings where Brian and he had also found themselves meeting up on an almost daily base, be it in more discrete places than simply in front of the buildings. But these students could allow themselves to meet up right in front of the university, for everyone to see, to look at him and silently - or not so silently - judge him as he walked by. Though most people had the decency not to say anything to him, Roger heard some slurs coming from a group of senior students standing next to a planter that had been placed on the tiled school yard in a weak attempt to create a warm atmosphere out all the bricks and concrete.  

Roger ignored the people calling out to him, but he could not say it didn’t do something to him, that it didn’t make him shiver deep inside. For the first time ever, he felt _unsafe_ at school, not knowing what people were going to do to him and not knowing what people’s intentions were towards him. He had never been someone others had been afraid of, but he had been respected by other students, and no one had ever had the courage to shout insults at him, knowing that he would snap back instantly. Right now however, he found himself out of replies; he had nothing to say to the insulters, and simply continued his way inside as if nothing was going on while in reality, it felt like his insides were on fire.

Once inside the main hallway, Roger found himself being stuck between the desire to either lock himself up in the bathroom to avoid the stares and glares he was receiving from the people around him, or to burst into the canteen to look for Brian. The desire to do the latter goal luckily proved to be way stronger than that to hide himself from the rest of humanity, so he took a deep breath, straightened his back, and paced through the hallway towards the canteen, where he started his quest for Brian.

Not to his surprise, when he first entered the massive square room, there was not a single sign of his partner to be found. Roger stood just around the corner of the door in an attempt not to attract too much attention - something he soon found himself failing at - and let his eyes slide through the room. It was a bit earlier than normally, and this was displayed by the number of empty seats in the endless rows of tables for six in the canteen before him. There were small groups of students sitting at tables to look over notes, have a somewhat later breakfast than he was normally used to on a school day, or to simply chat to each other about their weekend. Nowhere, however, was a sign of his boyfriend, of whom Roger knew would usually come to school early to sit at a table somewhere in the far left corner of the canteen and look over his notes.

Just when after some minutes of staring around without finding anything Roger wanted to give up the hope of finding Brian here, he discovered, standing at the window all the way to the right side of the canteen, a small group of third year students in which he recognised Sam and Matthew, two astrophysics students he knew Brian hung around whenever he wasn’t with him. Roger doubted for a moment - he hardly knew these people after all, let alone that he knew how they would react to seeing him now that they were most likely to have heard the news like everybody seemed to have. Still, his desire to find Brian overpowered his fear of these almost-strangers, so he walked up to them in the hope that they could tell him something about Brian’s whereabouts.

‘Sam! Sam, have you seen Brian?’ Roger said perhaps a bit too directly once he was only a few metres away from his target, and the four boys looked up at him with a bit of surprise visible on their faces that someone they didn’t know had just interrupted their conversation. Sam, however, was the first one to recognise him, and Roger felt a weight being lifted off his shoulders when he was greeted with a smile and a hand on his shoulder. At least _someone_ wasn’t treating him like a leper.

‘Oh, so you must be Roger! I know you, though, I’ve seen Brian and you hanging around sometimes,’ he said with a smile and a bit of an insistent look towards the three boys he had been standing with, who seemed to understand that this meant they were supposed to continue the topic they had been speaking of before the intruder had interrupted their conversation, and leave Roger and him to talk for a moment.

Once the three other students had resumed their discussion as if nothing had ever happened - yet still with their eyes wandering towards the pair of them every now and then - Sam continued: ‘But no, I wish I had. He’s usually here early, so I came here to give him back this book on the formation of black holes and the theoretical possibility of the development of white holes in future eras…’ Sam said as he pointed to the book he was holding below his arm, but his sentence dropped when he saw in Roger’s expression that the biology student had no idea what he was talking about, and nor that he really cared about this hypothetical ending to the life cycle of a stellar nebula. ‘And I was hoping to talk to him about… you know…’ Sam gave a bit of a vague gesture of his hand, suddenly not seeming so confident anymore now that he had to put into words that what everyone was always trying so desperately to avoid. ‘Is it true, Roger? What they say about you two?’

Roger was silent for a moment; out of all of the people around here, Sam so far had been the only one not to simply assume that all he had heard about Brian and him was true, but to ask him before making his own assumptions. Roger had only spoken to him for about a minute, but there was something in his confident but soft voice and the compassionate look on Sam’s face that made him trust this classmate of Brian more than anyone else currently walking around in this school building - apart from Brian if he was here, of course, in which case Sam would come in as a runner-up.

Roger nodded carefully, and was relieved to find that Sam not only didn’t freak out, but even seemed to support Brian and him. ‘It’s okay. I’m on your side. I’ve read in the newspapers about your arrest and the charges against you two, and it’s ridiculous. You two deserve to be left alone and do whatever you like with each other. Your relationship is no one else’s business.’

‘I wish everyone would think about it like that,’ Roger sighed, giving a nod in the direction of a group of girls walking by as they stared and whispered in each other’s ears when they saw him.

Sam followed his gaze, and when his eyes caught the handful of second year girls that indeed seemed to be inappropriately engaged with someone who was not their business at all, he turned towards them and shouted loudly enough for the entire corner of the canteen to hear him: ‘Say it to our faces if you’ve got something to say!’

The girls turned to look at the at sex feet three tall student in shock, before they half-walked, half-ran towards the centre of the canteen in what seemed to be a hurry to save themselves from another scolding.

‘Thanks for that,’ Roger said, but Sam simply raised his shoulders as to wordlessly tell him there was nothing to thank him for.

‘No need to. The only way I’d like to be thanked is by you stepping up for yourself. Give them hell if they treat you like that,’ he told him.

‘I wish I could, but it’s not that easy if you’re in the middle of things,’ Roger mumbled.

‘I know. But fight back, Roger. If not by stepping up against these bullies, then by staying true to yourself. Let no one take away what’s between Brian and you,’ Sam insisted, and Roger looked to meet a pair of eyes that seemed just as full of willpower to defeat these narrow-minded people as he was himself. He nodded at Sam, and received one more pat on the back before Sam turned back to his classmates with the words: ‘And just yell my name if you need me to beat someone up for you!’

Roger found himself smiling mildly for the first time in a few days; he had seen Sam before, but he had never been introduced to him or said more than a casual ‘hi’ to him when they were around Brian together - not because of Sam, but because Brian was all he could ever focus on. Now that he did get to talk to the boy, he instantly liked him; there was something about his cheerfulness, his humour, but at the same time his seriousness and his support of Brian and him. And his confidence, not to forget. Roger wished he could borrow some of Sam’s confidence, just enough to last him through the day. He could certainly use it now that the clock had struck nine and it was time to go to class. Roger looked around to find that most people had already disappeared from the canteen and were walking their way into the hallways or upstairs. Roger hastily followed those going upstairs and made his way to the second floor, where he could slip inside the lecture hall just before the professor closed the door behind him.

Of course, Roger knew that being late always set you up for being stared at by the entire multitude of people that had already settled down and who would look at you in a slightly judgemental fashion. Today, however, it was more than that. It was as if all the chattering, whispering, and even breathing stopped the moment, and as if all the eyes simultaneously turned to look at him. It was one collective stare that came from the hordes in front of him, including the lecturer, and all Roger could do was stare back. He let his eyes dart across the room and slip along everyone inside of it, only to find that practically everyone without more than maybe one or two exceptions was staring at him as if they had never seen a human being before.

 _Well, at least I won’t have to worry the news is still gonna shock someone,_ Roger sighed to himself while he walked into the room and made his way upstairs to find himself a place to sit. Every row of tip-up chairs he passed contained people who looked away from him, seemed apprehensive, condescending, unsure what to do with his presence, or even scared of it. Roger decided to climb all the way up to one of the rows all the way in the back, where not a single person was sitting yet. He laid out his books and pencil case and hoped to be left alone in this spot, but as soon as the lecturer started his speech about the difference in vegetal and animal cells, he noticed that people were (often not so discreetly) turning around in their seats as to look at him and then whisper the details of their account on him in the ears of their neighbours. Of course, he could only guess, but Roger was pretty sure that the scraps of paper passing through the hands of people in the rows in front of him had him as their main topic.

The minutes passed by slowly, and Roger found himself unable to focus on the different components that made up human muscle cells. The eyes looking at him and the notes about him being passed around the room was what followed him (haunted him, more like) until their lecturer gave them permission to leave the room for a fifteen minute break. Roger waited until most people had left the room, before he threw his books and notepad into his bag and took the chance to make his way down the shallow stairs and walk out of the classroom. He did not expect things to be any better or people to be any kinder outside, but he could not deal with this silent treatment from his own classmates any longer. On top of that, he might be able to catch a glimpse of Brian if he went to the canteen, something that definitely wasn’t going to happen if he stayed in here.

Halfway through his attempt to get away, though, he crossed ways with three people who were trying to move upstairs. He tried his best not to face them, but they did not seem to get the hint.

‘Ah, Roger! How are you?’

Roger was a bit confused by this unexpectedly warm reception; certainly because all he knew about the people standing next to him was that the guy who just asked him that question was named Robert. The two girls with him, he knew even less; one was called Lillian, a rather outspoken girl one could always hear talking or laughing and such in class, and next to her was a shy and quiet girl of whom Roger wasn’t sure of the name; it was something in the direction of Stella, or Sarah, or Sandra… Either way, he hardly knew these people, had never shared more than two words with them, and he did not know what to do with their sudden attempt at conversating.

‘Uhm, I’m okay?’ Roger said somewhat hesitant, then added an even more awkward: ‘within the given circumstances?’

‘I see, I see,’ Robert said, and Lillian nodded at him too; the other girl seemed too apprehensive to say or do anything. It was silent for a seconds, before the boy asked: ‘Is it okay if we sit next to you?’

Before Roger could even answer this question, Robert was given a poke against his ribcage by the silent girl, who turned out not to even need words to make clear that she was not at all pleased with the suggestion her friend had just put forward. Her reaction didn’t surprise Roger, who by now was used to people trying to get out of his way; it was Robert’s answer that surprised him.

‘It’s okay. Jesus sat with prostitutes and tax collectors, right?’ Robert said in response to the silent question, which seemed to be enough of a comfort for the girl - or, at least enough to shut her up. Roger failed to see why this analogy with Jesus Christ was of any importance in this situation, or if they were comparing him to a tax collector - or more likely, a prostitute - by saying this, but he found out soon enough.

‘In what church were you raised, Roger?’ Robert asked as casually as possible, but Roger could hear in his voice and see in his eyes that he was serious about this.

_Oh Lord, please don’t tell me we’re heading into this direction. People trying to convince me that a God I don’t believe in is going to send me to a hell I believe even less in, is the last thing I want to have to deal with right now._

 ‘I… My family isn’t religious,’ Roger answered just as casually in return, but he could hear the doubt and insecurity in his own voice - not because he was seriously starting to contemplate becoming a member of faith, but because he had no idea how to politely handle this kind of situation.

‘That explains something,’ Robert said. Roger could swear he could detect a hint of distaste in his classmate, as if he assumed atheism, moral decline, and licentiousness were automatically connected. Roger raised one eyebrow at the boy, which soon turned into two raised eyebrows the moment Robert revealed his intentions.

‘But you don’t have to worry, it’s not too late yet - even not for a… sodomite like you,’ Robert told him, making Roger wonder if ‘sodomite’ was a word people still used, or if his interlocutor had plucked the term right out of the King James Bible of 1611, if he remembered the date correctly from history class in high school. ‘It’s never too late for those who want to show remorse and lay their soul and fate in the hands of God.’

_Remorse? For what, for having found my soul mate? For not conforming to society’s narrow-minded ideas of what love should be like? For not having been raised a Christian?_

Roger gave himself a handful of seconds to breathe and count to five, to make sure he wouldn’t say something he would regret later - even though he knew that nothing but his immediate conversion to Christianity in the middle of the lecture hall could please these people. ‘Listen, Robert. You probably mean… _well_ ,’ Roger said with greatest difficulty, because it was hard as _hell_ to convince himself this person didn’t mean to do harm with his prejudice, ‘but this is not exactly-’

‘The Lord is ready to receive you whenever you leave your bad ways behind and turn to Him, because God loves every single one of his followers - sinners and saints, baptised and converts...’ Robert said, before he turned to the entourage standing behind him as to look for support. ‘Right, girls?’

The small and quiet girl seemed somewhat taken aback, probably afraid she would burn in hell until the end of time for speaking to a sinner in the eyes of her religion, but the other girl nodded vehemently as she whispered ‘amen’ in full conviction.  

 _What kind of obscure Jesus cult have I fallen victim of,_ Roger thought to himself while he desperately sought for a decent reply to serve the student with.

‘Guys, listen. I’m sure your God is great and forgiving, but I don’t need any of his grace or mercy or the like. I just wanted to… get some coffee before the break is going to be over,’ Roger came up with at the spot when he saw the first people with cups of steaming hot drinks walking into the classroom. He wasn’t actually thirsty, but he was willing to take on any excuse to get away from these people.

‘But God will redeem you-‘

‘The only one I would like to be redeemed of at the moment is you,’ Roger said calmly, gesturing at Robert’s right hand, which was still positioned on his shoulder and preventing him from moving further down the stairs. ‘And you might want to redeem yourself from me also. For all you know, homosexuality might be contagious.’

Robert quickly pulled his hand away and looked at the palm of it as if it had been infected with some serious disease - the homosexuality Roger had been warning him for, perhaps - and Roger took the chance to move past the three people and continue his way downstairs.

‘I told you this was a bad idea!’ Roger heard Stella, Sandra, or Sarah or whatever her name was hiss at her friend while he made his way down the stairs, and he had to oppress a smile. He knew he shouldn’t be laughing about religious fanatics who persistently believed in their own ideas, but _God_ , was it hard taking people like these serious.

With a bit of a smile tugging at the corners of his lips, he moved downstairs and walked out of the classroom with a bit more confidence than he had when he had entered it about an hour ago. It was not a lot more - certainly not when he saw people moving out of his way and whispering at each other the moment he walked through the hallway towards the canteen, but he told himself not to focus on them and look for Brian instead. He knew his boyfriend was supposed to be having a break from his classes around this point in time also, and that he was usually to be found somewhere in the canteen. But just like before classes had started, Roger could not find his lover between the multitude of people staring at him as if he was front page news - which he was sure he was going to become even worse once Brian and he would be convicted for their ‘crimes’.

 _Don’t think about that. There are enough people around to drag you down, don’t become one of them yourself,_ Roger told himself as he lined up for the coffee vending machine. The looks people gave him and the slurs and insults they threw at him while they passed by was something he decided to ignore as much as possible; he just pretended to be digging into the pocket of his jeans and find some spare coins when the end of the line was near.

In the end, it turned out he didn’t even need any of these. There was a small group of people before him, dressed in flared jeans, bright and colourful robes, and their lower arms covered in matching self-made jewellery - obviously inspired by or even part of the emerging hippie scene that had recently started to take a hold of the city - who offered to buy his drink. Roger politely declined, but they insisted it was the least they could do for him. One of them simply inserted the money before he could protest, another gave him some encouraging words (because everyone knew who he was by now, of course), before they handed him a cup of heavily sugared coffee. Roger didn’t have the courage or the heart to tell them he usually drunk his coffee plain black, because these people seemed to mean so well, so he simply took small sips of it and tried really hard not to let it show that it felt as if the enamel was crumbling off his teeth every time he drunk from the sugary substance.

He shared some small talk with the group of four, complimented their remarkable clothing style, and politely declined the joint they offered him. They were even nice enough to stick up for him and chew out some senior student who felt the irrepressible need to empty the remains of his cup of coffee on Roger’s shoulder. Roger eventually had to go back to his class, and even though he hadn’t managed to catch any of the names or study orientations of the group he had been talking to, they gave him the same comforting feeling Brian’s friend Sam had given him that morning - that he was not completely alone in this, that it was 1967, and that there were more people who were sick and tired and ready to stand up against the establishment and their old-fashioned ideas on love and relationships.

Unfortunately, this feeling of support didn’t last too long. The rest of the class went rather okay now people seemed to have gotten somewhat used to the presence of a ‘sodomite’, as Robert - who was now sitting in the front row as to protect himself from any non-Christian energy - had called him.

New troubles only showed up when the class was over and the multitude of people moved over to their molecular biology class. The first thing Roger noticed when they left the stairs behind them and walked into the hallway to which their destination was attached, was that their lecturer was standing next to the door. It seemed out of place for Roger; the man was usually inside the classroom to mess with the slide show he insisted on using but which never projected anything visible on the school board anyway. Roger told himself that professor Whitman was just standing there to greet the students who entered the classroom, even though he knew the strict and somewhat antisocial teacher would never give his students any sign of appreciation for their presence at his lecture. This knowledge was backed up by the fact that the professor wasn’t speaking to anyone; his eyes were darting through the masses, and they rested once they had settled on Roger.

‘Mister Taylor, you I want to have a word with,’ the man said once Roger was about to walk into the lecture hall. Roger raised an inquisitive eyebrow at him, even though he could already guess the topic of discussion. He expected another speech about how homosexuality was reprehensible according to either the Bible, the word of law, or other institutions that since a few days all seemed to have a lot to tell him. Still, what the professor said  was beyond what Roger could have prepared for. In the middle of the hallway, in the presence of his classmates and many other passers-by, the man said in the most passively aggressive voice: ‘I can’t allow you be present at this lecture.’

Roger had to repeat these words in his mind a few times to really let the meaning of them sink in. He wasn’t allowed to go into this class, he was denied his access to education, someone could simply ban him from going places all because he was in love with someone of the same sex. All the while, Roger had been hoping that the hate and misunderstanding would only come from fellow students, and that the university staff, being part of a professional and neutral institution, was going to stay out of the whole situation. But it seemed like even that was too much to ask for - and in all honesty, it failed to surprise Roger. If the majority of people from his own age did not seem to be able to understand him or believe in equal rights, then what could he expect from the older, even more conservative generation?

Even though Roger knew it was going to be useless to step up to a stubborn, hard-headed biology professor who was at least forty years his senior, he still decided to give it a try; he did not want to give up without a fight, certainly not now that his entire class was observing them. ‘What do you mean, you can’t let me in this class?’

‘I am afraid your presence would compromise the safety of your fellow students and the atmosphere in class. We cannot allow sexual assault under any circumstances,’ the man said in the same distant voice that he had been using to bring him the news that he wasn’t welcome at his lecture, and this time Roger felt the anger welling up inside of them. He knew there were lots of silent prejudice about people who were gay, lesbian, bisexual, or who in any other way did not conform to societal norms, but being directly confronted with them was painful if not aggravating. The thought that people were using his orientation as a reason to assign negative character traits to him based purely on their own prejudice, made Roger furious, and it was starting to get harder and harder to hide these emotions.

‘Compromise… I compromise people’s safety simply by being here following classes?’ Roger asked in a voice loud enough for all bystanders to hear him. ‘Did anyone feel threatened by my presence during the last two hours?’ There was silence at first, but just as Roger was going to use the lack of objection as evidence that no one felt like he was a threat to their safety, he heard a voice roaring from the lecture hall: ‘Not as long as you sit all the way in the back of the room!’

There was laughter and some people joined in with shouting or cooing, and Roger’s powerful ‘shut your mouth!’ unfortunately only seemed to fuel both them ánd his professor’s desire to make sure he would stay at a ‘safe’ distance from his lecture hall.

‘That is exactly what I mean,’ professor Whitman said, not even having to mention that he was referring to the presumed ‘unsafety’ and ‘changing atmosphere’ that would pop up if a gay student was to enter his class. Roger inwardly cursed his professor for being uninformed, the people inside the classroom for being narrow-minded, and himself for having snapped.

‘You can’t kick me out of your class,’ Roger calmly started over, determined to retain the little amount of dignity he could still find in himself. ‘I paid for this, I don’t have a criminal record ( _yet_ , he added in his mind), and you know I would never touch anyone without their permission. If molestation is such an issue to you, I can point at some male students who can’t behave around their female classmates, and which you would probably do good to remove from your class if you and your ‘no touching policy’ want to stay credible.’

This last comment earned him some boo-ing from male students and cheering from their female counterparts, but Roger wasn’t paying attention to any of them. All he could focus on was his teacher, who by now had narrowed his eyes in disdain as he searched for a reply.

‘I told you I cannot let you into my class and the topic is not up for discussion. Could you please leave before you disrupt the order here even more?’ Professor Whitman said, starting off softly but raising his voice towards the end of his sentence.

‘Now who’s causing a scene here?’ Roger asked and threw his hands in the air. They didn’t speak for a moment, and just when the older of the two looked like he had come up with a complaint of some sort, a hand on Roger’s shoulder made both of them fall silent and look at the newly arrived interrupter of their argument.

‘Mister Taylor, I’ve been looking for you. The timetable scheduler told me I could find you at this lecture hall.’ The voice of the principal of the Natural Sciences Department (God, what was his name again?) was calm and controlled, perhaps even kind, but Roger was too suspicious at the moment to trust anyone in this building right now. Adding to that that people only ever were picked up by the principal when something was seriously off, made him even more cautious not to fall for the kindness in his voice.

_He is also looking for me? Who the fuck am I, Billy the Kid? A heretic in the eyes of the Catholic church in thirteenth century Europe? A 24 karat gold bar during the gold fever of the 1850s?_

‘The scheduler was correct, in that case,’ Roger said calmly while he turned to face the man standing next to him, who by now released his shoulder. _People really have a thing for clinging onto my shoulder today,_ Roger thought when he remembered Robert having done the same that morning.

‘Perfect. Are you available to come with me for a moment?’ the man asked.

‘Of course. I don’t have any classes to go to at the moment anyway,’ Roger said with a touch of bittersweetness in his voice, giving his teacher an accusatory glance before he looked back at the principle with a polite smile. The man invited him to come with him, and Roger followed him without complaining; in all honesty, he was glad he was able to get away from the argument he had tumbled into, and which he was pretty sure he was not going to win after having spoken to his hard-headed professor in the fashion he had been doing. This way, he hadn’t been needing to give in to his defeat, even though being taken away from an argument with a professor for a private talk with the principal might be seen as even more of a defeat.

Pushing this thought away, Roger followed the principal through the hallway, up the stairs, down some more hallways, and down a pair of stairs again… They didn’t particularly share a word on their way to the wing of the building where the staff rooms were located, and Roger wasn’t so sure if this was a good or a bad sign. The principal hadn’t said anything negative to him yet, but nothing positive either; or well, positive was perhaps a bit too much of a word for someone who had been locked up at the police station for most of the weekend on the suspicion of gross indecency. Still, something along the lines of ‘I’m not going to kick you out of this university’ or ‘the hate and prejudice you’ve been facing just on the base of who you love will not be tolerated in this civilised institution’ would be appreciated by Roger, who felt himself growing more and more nervous the close they approached the hallway they had to be at.

They passed a number of identical looking wooden doors until the principal stopped in his tracks and dug a key out of the pocket of his jacket. While he opened the door, Roger glanced at the metal tin that had been nailed to the door at eye height, which boasted: ‘Dr. J. Arthurs, Head Natural Sciences Department’.

_If he was going to have to talk to this man that probably already knew all about the situation between Brian and him, their arrest and their charges, Roger preferred to at least know his name._

The door opened to reveal an atrocity of a staff member office. It was as if Roger had just travelled back in time and walked into a miniature sized mid-Victorian private library, complete with wrought iron book casings all along the walls, rows and rows of dusty books in them, a hard wooden desk, and (probably fake) velvet sitting furniture. It was absolutely the opposite of his own personal taste, but then again - the last thing he wanted was to be judged and criticised by strangers, so he pushed the thoughts of just how _incredibly_ ugly the whole interior was away and simply walked inside.

‘Please, take a seat,’ principal Arthurs invited him as he pointed at the velvety sofas in the corner of the room, while he himself walked over to the desk. ‘Would you like anything to drink?’

Roger wanted to politely decline the offer as a sign of not being demanding or anything, but the taste of the sickly sweet coffee he had been offered, continued to make his mouth feel dry. ‘A glass of water, please?’ Roger asked politely, knowing for sure - as sure as one could ever be of anything at this school - that there was no way anyone would throw any flavour enhancers in water. He discreetly peeked around the room that seemed to look uglier with the second while principal Arthurs poured two glasses of water out of the water tank at the corner of his desk, placing one in front of Roger - who by now had managed to find the courage to sit down on world’s ugliest sofa - while sitting across from him. Somewhere along the way, he seemed to have picked up a binder, which he said out on his lap. Roger had no idea what it was - it could either be a student enrolment account, the behaviour code and rules of the school, a personal file they had built up around his recent contact with the law… Whatever it was, Roger was not at ease with the object simply lying there as if it was ready to be used against him whenever the owner of it chose so.

‘You probably know why you’re here,’ principle Arthurs told him, placing the pair of glasses that had been hanging on some kind of string around his neck on his nose.

Roger put down the glass of water - _normal_ tasting water, alleluia - of which he had just taken a sip, and decided to just speak his mind. ‘Because you’re going to kick me ou- permanently suspend me?’ he corrected himself, trying his hardest to not come across as rude to the person who would indeed have the power to kick him out of his education programme or even the entire school if he pleased.

‘Oh no, no, those are not my intentions,’ the man said, which on its own would have been comforting; had it not been for what he added to this sentence right after. ‘Although I know from experience that it is legal...’ He stood up from his seat and pulled what seemed to be the first the best binder out of one of his book shelves, but in passing Roger saw the title of it contained the word ‘penal code’. The man looked at the table of contents before he flicked through the pages, stopping at the beginning of what seemed to be a new chapter. ‘It’s supposed to be somewhere here, something about students engaging in undesirable practices and behaving unnaturally can be removed from the school, let alone that a charge on a criminal offence can be…’ the principal looked up from the book to see Roger looking at him both sceptically and slightly terrified, which seemed to be reason enough for him to put the binder aside. ‘…Anyway, that is not what I’m going to do. We believe you deserve a second chance.’

‘Thank you,’ Roger sighed in relief, before he found himself pondering about the meaning- and implications of this so-called ‘second chance’. As far as he was concerned, second chances usually revolved around showing remorse, promising you would better your life, alter your behaviour in a way that was seen as desirable by the people granting you the second chance… And suddenly, the whole idea of a second chance did not seem all that appealing to Roger anymore. Not if it included having to give up his relationship or even being in touch with Brian completely, publicly show remorse for the actions he absolutely did not feel sorry about in any way, and resign himself to pretending to be straight just to be accepted  by the school community - if they were ever going to accept him again after they had all found out about his ‘sexual deviations’.

Roger worked hard to keep all these thoughts for himself and not spat them out towards the principal and instead asked: ‘And what do I have to do to receive this ‘second chance’?’

‘Well, of course we would like you to behave in a way that will not be considered offensive to the general public when it comes to your romantic relationships…’ principal Arthurs started off, and Roger immediately felt the rage boiling up inside him again, but could not say a word to counter the principal’s words, for the man immediately rambled on. ‘But even if you do, I would be afraid that your… _recent past_ would haunt you here. Things like arrests and criminal charges, whether they were correct or incorrect or moral or immoral, stick in people’s minds, you see?’ he said, and Roger gave him one slow but most of all sceptical nod. He had a faint notion of where this was going, but just the idea of it was too stupid for him to fully comprehend all at once. ‘That’s why I, and some of the other staff, have been thinking… that it might be better for you to continue your studies elsewhere.’

Roger stared at the man for a few slow and tense seconds, not knowing how to react to this proposal - or that was, not knowing how to react to it in a decent fashion. If it had been up to him, he would have picked up the glass of water, smashed it right through the window across the room, together with that damned penal code of which he hadn’t even known the existence until five minutes ago, and tell the principle to shut his mouth. But, given that he knew these sorts of actions might get him expelled from the higher education system altogether, Roger found himself resigning to throwing his eyes up at the ceiling with an audible sigh and wishing that the God that Robert, Lillian, and whoever that other girl was, was real, because he could _definitely_ need his assistance right now.

‘You have _got_ to be kidding,’ Roger said, even though he already knew the answer to this question. He knew being asked to leave shouldn’t surprise him as much as it did; after having seen what the students and the staff in this place were capable of, he knew it shouldn’t even strike him as out of the ordinary if they would tie him up to a pillar in the middle of the canteen and light him on fire as some kind of ritual burning of a deviant. Before Roger could even consider the pros and cons of being burned alive - because in all honesty, it didn’t sound this bad anymore right now - the principal already rattled on about the plans he apparently had been plotting in some kind of staff meeting about what to do with Brian and him.

‘Is there maybe a way we can transfer you to another university, here in town, where people don’t know you? I won’t force you to leave, but I know that the Queen Mary University has a great biology programme that might interest you. I’m well acquainted with the head of their Natural Sciences Department, and I happen to know two of their lecturers of biomedical research, which is a course you’ll be having in your third year-’

Roger wished he didn’t have to, but he simply could not listen to the principal any longer, and interrupting him was the only way to stop the man’s endless talking about people he didn’t want to know and places he didn’t want to go to.

‘I’m sorry, but I do not want to transferred to another university. I won’t allow it,’ he said firmly.

‘It’s for your own good,’ the principal brought in, as if he seriously was convinced that it was in his best interest to move away to another place and start all over again. Roger, on the other hand, supposed that it was more in the best interest of the reputation of Imperial College to get rid of him. ‘It would be a fresh new start, somewhere no one would-‘

‘Thank you for your… _concern_ ,’ Roger managed with audible difficulty, ‘but I can’t take the offer. I belong here, and I want to be here when Brian returns.’

The principal looked a bit uneasy when Roger mentioned the name of his lover; he reached forwards to take a sip from his glass of water, coughing uneasily before he spoke two words that by themselves were meaningless but in context told Roger all he needed to know.

‘About that…’

‘What is it? Won’t he be coming back?’ Roger asked, looking deeply into the eyes of the man who seemed to be trying to escape is gaze at all costs; he was probably not all too excited to bring the news to Roger.

‘Brian May… is not going to return to Imperial College, I’m afraid,’ the principal told him softly, as if he genuinely felt sorry for Roger now that he saw the look of agony on Roger’s face; the look as if someone had just slapped him across the face. That was exactly how Roger felt when this news was shared with him - as if someone had slapped him into the face and knocked him right over and left him on the floor to bleed. All he had been living for the last few days, the only reason he had managed to keep up with the hate and homophobia here at school, was the thought that Brian and he would be reunited at this place, and now this hope - dream, more like - had been shattered by a single sentence.

‘You… you sent him away?!’ Roger’s voice was soft, but it had an edge to it that was sharp enough to cut the tension that hung in the air of the small office.

‘It wasn’t me, or any of us,’ the principal cleared himself and his co-workers of all the blame immediately. ‘Before we could even be in touch with him to invite him for a chat about what to do with the situation, we were informed that Brian was switching universities.’

Roger leant back on the brutally ugly sofa he was sitting on to let the words sink in. Brian had left Imperial College - the place he loved, the place he valued so much, the place he had devoted his entire _life_ to for the past two and a half years. And, even more of that, the place they had met, grown to be friends, lovers, the place they had been planning their secret meetings and exchanged their love letters and made appointments to go out together… Roger couldn’t believe Brian was gone from this place, that he would leave it all behind - leave _him_ behind - over a matter like this.

‘I’m sorry, Roger,’ principal Arthurs said, probably noticing the empty yet broken expression on Roger’s face. ‘Brian was an exemplary student, and we would have loved to give him a second chance here at Imperial College-’

‘Oh, so you wanted to keep Brian because he’s a straight A student who’s never gotten into any difficulty before, and get rid of me? Keep the one who’ll make for the least problems here and send the troublemaker away to save your reputation?’ Roger spat out, this time not managing to keep his emotions under control any longer.

‘That is not what I meant-’ the principal said, but Roger could tell by the way his face had turned a little paler than it had been, that there was more than just a bit of truth in his rambling.

‘Brian is more than just a statistic that’ll look good on your chart of graduate percentages, and I’m more than someone who talks in class! We’re _people_ , remember?’ Roger told him angrily. ‘We’re people, and you treat us like machines you can hire to stimulate your sales or whatever and drop us into the garbage when we’re not conforming to your standards!’

This finally seemed to elicit a reaction in Arthurs, who spoke up in a louder voice than the one he had been using before. ‘Mister Taylor, may I remind you that homosexual intercourse is forbidden in this country, and that you two have a restraining order until further notice?’

 _Who says we’ve been having intercourse,_ Roger wanted to snap back, before he realised that this might not be the most appropriate  answer - especially not because they most definitely had been admiring each other’s naked bodies, as to say so. Instead, he therefore opted to parrot the sentence of the principle, but give it a new twist: ‘Mister Arthurs, may I remind you that it’s 1967, and that intolerance and discrimination is forbidden in this country just as much?’

‘The national penal code _clearly_ states that homosexual activities-’

‘Parliament is _clearly_ discussing the legalisation of your so-called ‘homosexual activities,’’ Roger brought in the only recent news in politics that had managed to grasp his attention. ‘So what side of history do you want to be on, the progressives or the outdated?’

‘I am clearly part of the progressives, I offered you a second chance!‘ the man reminded him.

‘At another university, so you won’t have to deal with me. How progressive.’ Roger rolled his eyes.

The principal leant forwards by now, straightening his tie as if this would grant him more authority over his wayward student. ‘I will not have you speak to me this way!’

‘So who was it?’ Roger switched the topic; both because he was not interested in having a conversation about who had the right to say what to the other, and because Brian’s sudden departure from their school was still capturing all of his thoughts - and the more he thought about it, the more he realised that it was nothing like Brian to just leave this place without putting up a fight. Brian might have seemed obedient and docile for most outsiders, but Roger knew he was capable of more resistance than people generally gave him credit for.

‘…Who was what?’ the man across from Roger asked, clearly taken by surprise by this sudden twist of topic - and also sounding a lot calmer than he had been doing before.

‘Who wrote him out? I don’t believe for a _second_ that Brian voluntarily left Imperial College,’ Roger clarified. He looked into the eyes of the principal and could swear he could detect a hint of nervousness and uneasiness in them.

‘There was not a name mentioned in the phone call, nor on the resignation papers,’ the man told him, but Roger could tell right away that he was lying for various reasons.

‘No one sends a letter without signing it, and no one starts a phone conversation without introducing themselves. And if you took someone out of the system based on an anonymous phone call, it would mean that everyone could just disenroll each other for the laugh of it, and that your administration is failing,’ Roger debunked the statement quickly, before he leant forwards to the now even more uneasy looking headmaster. ‘I know more about his family situation than you would probably hope for at the moment, mister Arthurs,’ Roger said accusatorily as he thought about the things Brian had told him about his family; his father’s strictness, his hatefulness towards gay people, his speeches to Brian about how important it was that he would finish his studies, find a good job, a decent wife, and start a family in due time… and his mother, who would blindly follow her husband’s lead in 95 percent of the cases. ‘So tell me who it was,’ he demanded to know, even though he already had a feeling for who it was going to be.

‘It was his father,’ mister Arthurs confirmed Roger’s suspicions with these four simple words.

 _That fucking douchebag,_ Roger cursed inwardly. He had never trusted Brian’s father for a second, and he looked at him with the same dissatisfaction as the man looked at him. Roger knew Brian’s father had never really approved of his son spending time with him as a friend (probably fearing he would drag Brian down in a vicious circle of pop music, long hair, fashionable clothing, and having fun doing things other than school) - let alone what Harold would think about him now that he knew Roger was not just a friend to his son, but his partner.

‘Where is he now?’ Roger asked quietly, sighing when the principal just blinked at him in response. ‘Where’s Brian? What school is he going to now?’

‘I’m not allowed to tell you,’ principal Arthurs told him, seeming relieved by the fact that he didn’t have to answer the question, even adding an explanation to it: ‘I am obliged to stick to our student privacy policy, meaning that I’m not allowed to share a student’s grades, data, or personal information with third parties-’

‘Doesn’t matter. I’ll find out myself,’ Roger cut him off as he stood up and swung the strap of his backpack over his shoulder, wordlessly yet effectively announcing that he intended to leave.

‘Where are you going? We haven’t decided on where to send you yet.’ The principal followed Roger’s example of standing up, but this gesture did not stop Roger from moving to the door of the office.

‘I’m not going _anywhere_ in terms of school, but right now, I’m going to get over to Brian’s place to demand an explanation,’ Roger said.

‘You two have a restraining order,’ the principal reminded him, which managed to pull a chuckle from Roger’s otherwise completely serious face; something the student was sure was not the effect his superior had been hoping for.

‘With Brian’s father? Not that I’m aware of,’ Roger replied while tearing the door open. ‘Thank you for your time, mister Arthurs. It’s been wonderful, and I’ll be back at the earliest convenience,’ he said cynically, before he walked through the doorpost, shut the door behind him with a loud thud, and made his way through the hallway in a pace fast enough to make sure the principal could not catch up with him if he happened to be going after him. He was glad that he still heard no footsteps following his when he had reached the end of the hallway; he wanted to be left alone right now, especially now that he felt the tears starting to well up behind his eyes. It was all becoming too; Brian and he were not allowed to see or speak to each other, they were facing criminal charges, Brian had been removed from school, and there were serious reasons for Roger to believe they were going to send him away also. It simply felt as if the foundation that had been supporting his life until that point, had started to crumble and vanish into thin air all in a matter of days.

But no matter how broken he felt, Roger refused to let the tears stream down his cheeks; not while he was at school, with its hordes of students staring, pointing, whispering, and shouting at him. He had to be strong around this brand of folks, he told himself as he half-ran, half-stumbled down the stairs, thinking about the things he had been saying about not going anywhere to the principal moments ago. He found out that in all honesty, he wished he _never_ had to return to this hell place, its ignorant staff, and it intolerable students again. Yet he _refused_ to give in to the authority of these kind of people. They ruled by ignorance, made decisions based on prejudice, and reasoned with pure stupidity, and Roger was determined to stand up to their narrow-mindedness.

And the first person he was going to do that to, was Harold May.

Ignoring the pull at his hair, the pats on his back, the both positive and negative shouts aimed at him, and the not so subtle offer to meet up at the parking lot down the street at night to hook up on top of a car boot by a guy surrounded by a dozen of friends to laugh at his oh so funny joke, Roger walked across the school yard and followed the pavement towards the bus stops. He recalled that he had to take bus 51 if he wanted to travel to Feltham - not only had Brian told him so, but he had also taken the bus to Brian’s place himself to pick him up for a spare evening out, those few times his parents would allow them. He was glad to find that bus 51 had just arrived, so he could go inside and did not have to stand out there and feel like everyone was still watching and judging him the way. After all, the bus stops next to the university was practically still school premises when looked at how many staff and students walked around it.

Roger quickly took the small stairs to enter the bus and showed his public transport pass to the driver. For a moment he was afraid the bus driver was going to deny him access to his bus, just like professor Whitman had done to him that morning, but he soon remembered that he was outside the school and that public service workers would know him here. He received a nod from the chauffeur and quickly went on his way to the back of the bus to sit down as secluded as possible, just like he had done that morning. He opened the ‘modern biology for undergraduate students’ manual on a random page to hide his face behind while thinking of how he was going to tell Brian’s father _exactly_ what he felt towards him and his ridiculously outdated morals, whether the man wanted to hear it or not. Roger pushed scenarios like the man not opening the door to him, not listening to him, or possibly not even being home on a Monday morning half past eleven, aside; he was willing to stand in front of the door and ring the doorbell until Brian’s father would either return home, or if he was, open the door for him, for the remainder of the day if necessary.

The bus started moving, and Roger found himself caught up in ideas of what he was going to say to Harold once he would be standing eye to eye with the man. There were only a few things he paid attention to outside his own stream of thoughts, which were the number of bus stops they passed, and the comforting words of the two female students sitting across from him telling him they were on his side and that he had to stay strong. Roger appreciated their kindness, and their word gave him some of the courage he needed to leave the bus the moment it stopped at the corner of the average blue collar street in Feltham where he knew he had to be.  

It had been a while since he had last been to Brian’s place - given that his partner preferred meeting up at any other place than those where his parents were - but Roger still knew the directions by heart. After a short walk through a few indistinguishably similar streets, Roger arrived at a street  that according to the blue and white road sign attached to the first house was the street he had to be at. Due its uniformity, Roger had to look at the house numbers on front doors and mail boxes to find the particular residence he was looking for. The rows of semi-detached post-war style looking houses all looked the same, and had it not be for the occasional flowers or different shapes of mailboxes in the garden, Roger would have believed he wasn’t moving any further than the first house of the street, no matter how long he walked through the empty-looking street.

When Roger eventually came across Brian’s house, he almost would have passed the ordinary looking semi-detached home, had it not been for the house number neatly carved into a wooden plaque that hung next to the front door. Apart from this sign, there was nothing about the house that set it apart from the ones around it, and had Roger not known that Brian´s parents were very ordinary people who preferred to go up in the masses over putting themselves out there for other people to see them, he would have thought that it was against the rules to make your residence stand out in this street.

Roger stood still in front of the modest single family home for a few seconds to study what was still left to study after having walked through the practically identical streets. There was a small garden in front of it, neatly cut grass at either side of a pebble stone path that cut the garden in two right in the middle of its surface. At the end of the path was the front door, the same shade of burgundy as the rest of the doors in the street, with a door bell and the beforementioned wooden plaque next to it. The curtains had been drawn back and allowed Roger to peek inside the living- and dining room, but he could not spot any kind of activity going on inside. He looked around to see if there was a car, a bicycle, or some other kind of vehicle that could indicate someone was at home, but then he remembered that Brian always took the bus to travel anywhere and that his father’s car - if he was at home - would be parked at the side of the road, where a whole row of vehicles currently standing there made it impossible for Brian to see whether one of them belonged to Brian’s family or not.

Roger didn’t know if he had to be comforted or not by the idea that there were no people to be seen around Brian’s house; it sure made walking towards the garden path and following it all the way to the door a whole lot stressful, but then again, he had not made up a whole speech and travelled all the way to bloody Feltham to face a closed door. He had things to say and he was going to say them, whether the residents of the premises liked it or not. And the first step to be in touch with them, was going to be by pressing the doorbell.

By producing the image of Brian involuntarily walking around at an unknown university his father had send him off to without his permission or probably even asking for his opinion, Roger found the courage to take a step forwards, press the doorbell loudly and clearly, and step back with his heart pounding in his chest while he waited for a reaction to his unexpected presence.


	4. Chapter 4

Never before had seconds seemed to last like minutes or hours of even _days_ to Roger. Not that time he had broken his arm as a child and when he had needed to wait for the doctor to treat him (without anaesthesia back in those days, mind you); not when he had been waiting to hear the results of his finals, or whether he was approved to enrol in the university’s biology programme; not when he had first given his phone number to Brian and had to wait for him to call him; not when he had first told Brian he loved him and had to wait for a number of seconds in which Brian seemed to be too shocked to reciprocate the answer; not even last weekend, when he had been locked up in a prison cell at the local police station to wait for his interrogation without knowing where Brian was or how he was doing. Never, _ever_ had mere seconds seemed to pass as slowly as they did the moment between when Roger had pressed the bell and the moment the sound seemed to elicit a reaction from someone inside the house. He knew that the real time lapse could not have been more than five seconds, maybe six or seven at maximum, but it surely felt like an eternity when one was standing in front of a practically unknown house to talk to - yell at, more like - at a practically unknown person who was most likely to hate him with a burning passion for having ruined his son’s education and reputation, as Harold probably saw it.

Roger waited with an ever-faster beating heart for the agonising silence and stillness in the house to turn into some sign of life, but when this finally happened after some moments, he only felt himself breaking out into sweat even more than before. There was little to be seen or heard; there was some unintelligible talking between people (which indicated that there were at least two people inside the house, which Roger realised could be either a blessing or a curse to him) and some footsteps appearing from the otherwise quiet house, which meant someone had stood up to probably open the door.

Roger swallowed thickly when he heard a door (most likely that of the hallway) opening and being shut again, followed by footsteps nearing the front door. He took a deep breath, straightened his back, curled his hands up into fists, and tried to look as confident as possible when he heard a key turning in the lock and when the door was opened. Whether all of this was preparation from his side was necessary was a completely different topic, considering that it was not the tall and broad figured  master of the house that he was expecting to open the door, but a petite, middle aged woman with a light brown perm, wearing a pair of round glasses, and dressed in a modest mid-calf length floral dress was standing across from him at the other side of the doorpost instead.

Roger and the woman he assumed had to be his boyfriend’s mother stood looking at each other for a few awkward second that almost (but not completely) seemed to take as long as those that he had been waiting for her to open the door. He once again didn’t know if he had to be relieved or not when this woman was standing in front of him instead of the person he had come for; on one side, she certainly seemed a lot less frightening than her husband, if the thing Brian had confessed about his father were all factually correct (which Roger assumed they were; Brian was not one to lie or exaggerate - one to play things down, rather). On the other hand, she already seemed displeased about his arrival, and he feared that Brian’s father was only going to be even more negative towards his sudden appearance.

Or maybe ‘displeased’ wasn’t the word to describe her reaction to seeing him with; it was something closer to uneasiness or even total discomfort when she glanced over her shoulder as to check if no one had been following her to the hallways before she spoke to him.

‘You… you must be Roger,’ Brian’s mother said in a soft and shaky voice, eyes wide in a kind of surprise that was not so much positive but negative, something closer to fear.

‘And you must be Ruth, Brian’s mother,’ Roger said calmly, both to comfort himself with the thought that this was not ‘the real thing’ yet, and to comfort his boyfriend’s mother at least to the extent to not run away at just the sight of him, which, looking at her eyes, seemed to be an option she was considering to resort to.

‘I am,’ she confirmed placing one hand on the door post as if she needed something to hold on to now that this stranger had appeared at her door, still sounding more than just a little baffled and by Roger’s sudden arrival. ‘What… how did you… what are you doing here? Brian and you are not allowed to talk,’ she whispered while spying around the still empty suburban street, as if a neighbour could be eavesdropping on their conversation and land both of them into serious trouble if they were to inform the authorities about Roger having shown up at his partner’s house while having a restraining order between the two of them.

‘I know. I’m also not here to talk to him,’ Roger said, but knowing he had no intentions to break the contact order, did not seem to comfort Ruth either.

‘Who would you then- I really shouldn’t be talking to you either. The investigation is still going, not to even say that if my husband would find you here…’ She didn’t finish the sentence to tell Roger what she expected would happen if Harold found him out here, which for some reason made the threat sound even more serious than it would had been if she had added something along the lines of ‘he will scold and cuss you with the entirety of his vocabulary’ or ‘he will drag you into a dark alley and beat you up.’

‘Oh, so he’s home? Great. I’d like to have a word with him,’ Roger said with undoubtedly more courage in his voice than in the remainder of his body and senses. It was just that he refused to give in to his fear for Brian’s father, even though whose own wife seemed to shiver at just the thought of what he was capable of if he was to find Roger out there.

‘Have a word with… are you out of your mind?’ she asked in a somewhat louder voice than before, and though it did not sound aggressive or impolite in any way, this use of language seemed unfitting for the shy and delicate woman that was Brian’s mother. Roger couldn’t blame her for resorting to this kind of language, however; if she was just as afraid for Harold’s reaction to Roger’s appearance as the student was himself, then she had a serious reason to believe that he had lost his senses for coming over and demanding to look the danger straight into the eyes.

Speaking of danger… it seemed like the danger was closer by than Roger could have guessed when a dark, low voice came from the living room, making both the woman and himself fall silent and look into the direction of where the voice seemed to be coming from.

‘Who’s at the door, Ruth?’

Roger and Ruth faced each other right after they had heard the voice, and though Roger hoped his face did not show the same level of panic as Ruth’s face did, he was almost positive something of his uneasiness must have showed in his face, even if it was just during those few seconds before he had managed to pull himself together and tell himself that this was exactly what he had come for.

‘There is no one, dear. Just a… pushy salesclerk whom I was just telling to leave,’ Ruth shouted back in the direction of the living room, before she turned around to give Roger a pleading look and request for him to leave their premises again.

‘Please, do yourself a favour and get away from here. If my husband sees you here-’

‘I didn’t travel all the way to be sent away the moment I arrive,’ Roger interrupted her - not to be impolite, but to let her know that he was serious about what he said. ‘Is your husband going to show up at the door or should I call for him?’

‘Don’t!’ she said, a flicker of fear for either his sake or that of her own passing through her eyes, before she took in a deep breath and said calmly yet insistently: ‘He won’t come out here, he’s busy reorganising the bookcase.’

‘Tell him I’ve got all day,’ Roger said leisurely, giving this statement some more power by leaning against the wall as if he seriously intended not to leave their ground before he had gotten to see the person he had come to see.

‘Please, don’t do this,’ Ruth said, a touch of desperation in her voice that made Roger believe her husband was either an abuser, had an aggressive personality disorder, was a psychopath, or a combination of these factors. Probably the last option. Based on Brian’s descriptions and accounts of his father, Roger was afraid he could not cross out any of these options with complete certainty.

‘Is that salesclerk still there, Ruth?’ The voice was audible again, and the more she heard it, the more Ruth seemed to wish to just slam the door shut in Roger’s face and hurry back to the living room she probably had been sitting before she had been shaken up by this unannounced visitor. She didn’t do this, of course; knowing from Brian how polite and considerate his mother usually was, Roger assumed she would never engage in such an impolite activity, even though she probably wished she had the courage to do so at the moment - to do whatever it was going to take to make Roger leave and spare the both of them an encounter with Harold.

‘Just go now and spare yourself from a lot of troubles,’ Ruth insisted one more time, but Roger refused to even take it into consideration; and even if he would have, it would have been too late for that by the time he had gotten to consider it. He heard heavy footsteps approaching the hallway, a door opening, and the next time he blinked, he saw a tall silhouette standing no more than two metres away from him at the end of the hallway.

Well, there it was then, the point of no return. There was no way Roger could now run off and get away without Harold ever finding out he had had the courage to show his face here; there was no way he could return to the point where the threat that was Brian’s father was nothing more than a discomforting imagine he had drawn of him based on his impressions from him in the back of his mind. He was real, he was standing in front of him, and there was no way Roger could back away from him now - and through everything, he found that he also didn’t want to back out, not even now that he got to see the look on Harold’s face that was even more disgruntled than Roger had been bracing himself for. He was a lot taller than Roger was himself - possibly taller than Brian, which explained where Brian got his height from not that Roger had seen it definitely could not have come from the genes his mother had passed on to him - but otherwise he was skinny, lanky (again a physical trait Brian must have inherited from him), and did not seem as physically frightening as Roger had been afraid of. The threat was more in his face; in the disgruntled expression he had been describing before was what was causing most of Roger’s nervousness. However, simply reminding himself of what this man had done to both him and mainly to his own son, was all Roger needed to feel confident enough to tell him the truth about what he thought of him, as to say so.

Harold approached the door until he was standing right next to his wife, who had moved to the doorpost as to leave space for her spouse enter the conversation she probably preferred not to be having in the first place -  especially now that the two hostile sides were standing eye to eye.

‘Interesting. I didn’t know Roger had switched careers overnight,’ Harold gritted, obviously not happy to find that his wife had been lying about the person who had showed up at their door.

‘He was just leaving-’ Ruth said in what seemed to be an attempt to calm down the atmosphere that had heated up the moment Roger and Harold had come to catch each other’s eyes.

‘I would like to have a word with him first,’ Harold told her ominously, his cold eyes fixated on Roger, who simply stared back at him with the same distrustful look in his eyes.

‘And so would I,’ Roger joined in to let his rival know that he was not the one in charge here - or well, this guy, who was about twenty centimetres taller than him and probably about thirty years his senior, was clearly more empowered in his own house than he was as a random visitor, but this thought was not going to hold Roger back from putting up a fight.

‘Come on, if Roger would just go home again, and we would get back inside for lunch…’ Ruth had placed her hand on her husband’s shoulder and undertook a weak attempt to convince him to move back into the house again, but he seemed just as determined about staying at the front door as Roger was.

‘You go back inside to make lunch, love. I’ll be with you in a minute,’ Harold told his wife, but Roger was sure it would have been more convincing if he had been looking at her while speaking these words instead of still focussing on him while rolling up the sleeves of his shirt as if he intended to make a boxing match out of this encounter. Roger hoped it would not have to come to this point, but he was convinced that if it did, he would not be afraid to give the man in front of him the punch right across his face that he definitely had coming.

Ruth seemed unsure of what to do, whether she had to stay and watch her husband and her son’s boyfriend quarrel or even fight, or if she had to move inside again and let them go around whatever business they intended to participate in without any supervision of someone who managed to keep as calm and rational as one possibly could be at the moment. Roger couldn’t blame her when she eventually scurried inside after a moment of thought; he could totally understand she couldn’t bear looking at the scene that was about to go down in her hallway, but it still made him feel a little less secure to know that he was out here with no one else than Brian’s father, whose expression had turned from grim to ghastly harsh and unrelenting by now.

There was a second of shared silence between the two men the moment Ruth opened and closed the door to the kitchen, the sound of the heels of her shoes vanishing into thin air, before Brian’s father was the one to kick off their altercation.

‘ _You_ ,’ Harold spat out as if the word had a bad taste to it in his mouth while he took a step forward and pointed an angry index finger at Roger of which the student was not too sure if it was supposed to scare him or if it was more likely to have scared Harold’s son back in the days when Brian had still been a toddler. It was more the tone in which he spoke than the gesture that brought across the message that he seemed to be pretty damn furious, and that before Roger had even been given the chance to say a single word. ‘how do you even have the _courage_ to show up at my house? Bother my wife with your problems?!’

‘How do you even have the courage to take Brian out of Imperial College and hide him from me someplace else?’ Roger snapped back at Harold. The man seemed taken aback for a second by the face that an adolescent had the courage to speak to him like this (Roger was pretty sure that Brian would never even consider raising his voice to his father), but he soon recollected himself.

‘You stay out of his decisions and personal business,’ Harold demanded curtly, narrowing his eyes at Roger by now - something of which Roger once again wasn’t sure if it was meant to threaten him, because if it was, it failed to fulfil its purpose.

‘First of all, it wasn’t his decision, it was _yours_ ,’ Roger hissed, which earned him a look even dirtier than those he had received before - which was certainly saying something. Then, before Harold would have been given the chance to speak up for himself, Roger added: ‘And his personal business is _my_ business also. He’s my boyfriend, whether you like it or not!’

Harold’s eyes widened in surprise - in mortification more like, perhaps - when he heard Roger applying the word ‘boyfriend’ to his son. He looked as if Roger had just slapped him across the face -which, Roger had to be honest, was an activity worth considering at the moment.

‘Don’t you _ever_ dare call him your boyfriend again,’ Harold managed after a few seconds of silence, his otherwise pale face turning red from anger by now. ‘My son would _never_ choose-’

‘He never chose to be your son, but he did choose to be my boyfriend!’ Roger shot back in a voice that was serious but might have a bit of a ‘gotcha’ flavour to it; even though he was trying to prove a serious point to Brian’s homophobic father, this did not mean he would refrain from rubbing in where both of them were standing compared to Brian. Roger was the one the astronomy student had chosen to love and be in a relationship with, while his father had been the one to talk him into the closet for years with his homophobic behaviour and comments, the one who had practically forbidden the two of them to even be friends, the one who had been forcing him to leave Imperial College and start all over elsewhere, the one who had done things to Brian of which it was probably better for the contours of Harold’s face that Roger was not yet aware of them this exact moment they were standing in front of each other at reachable distance, because if he had, Roger was sure he would not have left much of Harold’s face intact.

‘How… how _dare_ you…’ Brian’s father spat out as if he once again could not believe he was being spoken to in this fashion on his own premises. ‘Brian never chose you, you lured him into it!’

‘Into what?’ Roger scoffed. ‘Into being in love? A devoted relationship? Having someone at his side who accepts him for who he is?’

‘Into this… this _trap_ , designed to bring my son down!’ Saliva was starting to collect at the corners of Harold’s lips, and Roger tantalisingly moved his finger across his own chin as to pretend to rub off the substance he was afraid his opponent was going to spit at him if he did not calm down anywhere soon - which, to be honest, did not sound like a very likely scenario to him.

Roger hardly managed to oppress the cynical smile that threatened to form on his lips. The man appeared to completely have gotten delusional by now; as if anyone out there would be out to rob his son of a future in astrophysics, let alone that he would be the one to do this. ‘Do you honestly believe I have any intentions to go around the school to find students I can lure into a relationship so we can get into trouble together? Do you think I betrayed myself and him to the police and had us locked up for the weekend with a trial to follow? Do you think this is what I wanted for Brian?’

‘I don’t know! I don’t know what kind of things your sort of people are up to!’ Harold was shouting by now and threw his arms up in a gesture of helplessness that yet managed to show off a vibe of anger.

‘I’m sorry for breaking it to you, but if by ‘your sort of people’ you mean ‘gay people’, I’m very much afraid your own son is one of the-’ Roger tried to throw back, but his voice was overpowered by that of the other man before he could finish his sentence.

‘Enough! Brian is not gay,’ Harold shouted, surprising Roger by having the courage to say that three letter word he hated so much out loud for the entire street to hear (the street that was still empty, although some neighbours seemed to have opened windows to join in on the heated discussion that probably was the most exciting thing to happen for the rest of the year in a suburban street like this). ‘He never has been and never will be, he always told me likes girls-’

Now it was Roger’s turn to interrupt Harold. ‘Does that surprise you? Of course he told you he’s into girls, because God knows what you and your homophobic ass would do to him if he came out!’

‘That was the limit!’ Harold was yelling by now, which on its own told Roger that he indeed really had pulled a sensitive string by now. But on top of raising his voice to an inappropriately loud level, Brian’s father seemed to feel the irrepressible need to show Roger that he had had it with him by leaping forwards and gripping a handful of his hair and pulling at it painfully hard. Roger could not hold back a screech of a combination of both pain and surprise; he had braced himself for physical violence if this was going to be necessary, but he had expected it to start off by pushing each other of giving each other a slap across the cheek or so, and not by pulling at each other’s hair.

Or well, pulling at each other’s hair… It was currently only Harold pulling at his hair and not the other way around, and Roger soon enough discovered that there was not so much hair left on top of his rival’s head for him to pull at, making him have to resort to lashing out to the man who held him captive blindly. After all, there was not so much to see for him when being held down by his hair by a guy who was at least twenty centimetres taller than he was.

After a few slaps that ended up in loose air, Roger eventually managed to hit the side of Harold’s head with his fist, resulting in a surprised gasp from his attacker. Roger hoped with all of his might that it hurt as badly as it could; Harold surely was hurting him by tugging at his hair, and for this reason and many others besides that Roger hoped he would have caused as much pain as he could by hitting him.

‘Let go of me, you son of a bitch!’ Roger cursed on top of the blow for a maximum attack effect, which luckily seemed to work, regarding Harold’s reaction to it.

‘ _What_ did you just call me?!’ Roger found it remarkable that Harold seemed to stop dead in his tracks whenever he insulted him, even though this instance must have been at least the third time he had done so. It seemed as if the man could not get used to insults and swear words, but then again - if he ruled his family with as much as an iron grip as the one he currently was holding Roger’s hair with, the student assumed that the man was simply uninformed with any swear words any other adolescent from Brian’s age would normally bring home. In any case, the insult was apparently bad enough to make the man let go of his hair and stand looking at him for a second. Unfortunately, before Roger could manage to regain his balance again after just having been pulled forwards, dragged around at his hair, and then released all of a sudden, Harold have him a push against both his shoulders that was powerful enough to make Roger stagger two steps back in order not to fall.

‘What the fuck is your problem?’ Roger cried the moment he knew for sure he had regained his balance and was not going to trip over for sure, flashing his enemy a dirty look.

‘You showing up at _my_ house and telling me… telling me…’

Harold seemed so indignant about the fact that the boy who had landed his son in prison for the weekend and had gotten him into a legal investigation (which was how Roger assumed Harold saw him, rather than as the boy who wanted to fight for the right to be with his son) to finish his sentence, so Roger gladly did this for him.

‘The truth? About what kind of awful father and human being you are?’ Roger added with more than just a touch of biting contempt. ‘Your own son is afraid of you because you put him through _hell_ -’

This final speech of Roger’s seemed to be too much to handle for Harold, whose face had turned crimson red from angriness by now. He opened his mouth as to say something, but closed it right after, probably still at a loss for words. Roger was just about to grin at what felt like his rival’s defeat, but it turned out that it was probably going to be the shortest defeat in history. Before he knew it, the two hand palms were back again, this time giving him a powerful push against his chest that made him stagger, and a second push against the exact same spot ensured his fall against the cobblestone garden path he previously had been standing on. The student tumbled backwards to the ground and felt a sharp pain flashing through the elbows he landed on, but he didn’t get the time to see if he hadn’t seriously damaged his skin or the bones beneath it. Before Roger could even comprehend what was going on, Harold leapt forwards and was on top of him, gripping onto both sides of his collar and pulling his face dangerously close to his own angry one.

‘You shut your mouth about Brian right now!’ his attacker barked at him, and Roger, though still dazed by this sudden and unexpected action, managed to snap back quickly enough to make it look like he was still in control, even though it felt like his entire insides were on fire.

‘And what if I don’t?’ Roger hissed back at him. Harold did not seem to have a worthy answer to this question and instead just continued to stare him in the eyes contemptuously, until they were eventually interrupted by the sound of footsteps moving down the stairs and a voice that cried out to the pair of them.

‘Dad? Dad, what are you doing? Stop that!’

Both Harold and Roger first looked each other in the eyes and then turned to look up at the direction of the sound; Harold craned his neck, and only later Roger realised that he could have used this moment perfectly to punch the man against the cheek and try to scramble away from his grip. But at that given moment, the sound of Brian’s voice seemed to paralyse Roger to the point where he could do nothing but stare at the source of it. He saw a pair of legs emerging from the staircase at first, before the rest of the silhouette of his boyfriend’s body became visible both to him and the man still positioned on top of him when Brian descended down the stairs. Roger wished he could have covered his mouth at the sight of his partner; there was nothing he had been wishing for than to see Brian again, to see how he was doing, to hug him and kiss him and tell him that he loved him and that he was going to fight for their relationship no matter what his family thought of it. Unfortunately, half of these things were forbidden due their restraining order, and if they were not forbidden, they were momentarily impossible now that Harold was quite literally holding him hostage on the pavement by pressing him down with the weight of his body even more than before, as if he was afraid Roger otherwise get up and rush towards the boy in the hallway if he didn’t actively prevent him from doing so. As if the student was in any position to sneak away in his current state of shock.

‘What on earth are you doing here?! Get away!’ Harold yelled at his son, who - probably much to his surprise - chose not to listen to him.

‘Leave Roger alone!’ Brian demanded while he stumbled down the stairs a few more steps, having to cling onto the handrail of the wall to retain his balance. Even from the distance between them, Roger could see that his boyfriend was shaking, and he felt so bad for Brian for having him tumble into a situation like this. He never would have wanted for Brian to see him like this, or see his own father like this, even though he was afraid Brian was more familiar with the sight of his father being in a livid state than he was. Just the thought of Brian being alone with his father in this house (or well, in the presence of his mother, but he did not assume the fragile looking woman formed much of a balance against this hot-tempered man) made Roger feel queasy, especially now that he couldn’t do anything to protect his partner from his own dad in the current situation.

‘I’m the one to hand out the orders here, not you!’ Harold yelled. ‘Get back upstairs right now!’

Roger looked at Brian and saw on his face an understandable combination of fear, misunderstanding, and uncertainty; misunderstanding towards what on earth was going on between his father and his partner, fear about what was going to happen between the two of them, and uncertainty about what his role in this quarrel should be. Roger could see in his eyes that the boy intended to rush towards them and help him out, and even though he would have loved to have loved to have Brian storm out to come to his aid just to prove his father whose side Brian was on, he knew it was a bad idea for the safety of his lover. After all, Roger knew he was going to leave these premises sooner or later - if Harold would finally let go of him, for the love of God - but Brian was bound to stay here and deal with whatever reaction his father was going to show his family once they were between the three of them again inside the safety of their own house. Roger realised that best thing he could do right now was send Brian away for his own safety, even though it hurt like hell to turn him down, now more than ever before.

‘Leave, Brian. Please, do it for me,’ Roger said in a voice as calm and comforting as he could at this point in time. He wanted to spare his lover from the sight of whatever was going to be happening between his father and him; after having experienced Harold’s hot-tempered character for less than five minutes, he could already tell that his tirade was probably going to last on for a while, and the last thing he wanted was to land his partner into any deeper problems with his father than he probably already was at the moment.

‘But I-’ Brian stammered, his voice hardly audible when he spoke.

‘I’ll hit him if you don’t disappear within three seconds from now!’ Harold threatened, and before Roger could even blink, there was a first dangling in the air above his face. He could swear he heard Brian gasped at the sight of this new development in the battle between the two men, and he seemed unable to move, speak, or even breathe for moments after. Even Roger himself had to swallow thickly; as mentioned before, he had been preparing for the possibility of violence, but not for finding himself on the floor with the father of his best friend positioned on top of him with one hand clinging around the collar of his shirt and the other one ready to stomp him a black eye.

‘You won’t. You won’t!’ Brian eventually managed, but he didn’t sound like he even believed it himself, and his father’s reply certainly did not serve to dismantle his fears.

‘You know I will,’ Harold hissed, and Roger could tell by the look in Brian’s eyes that Harold’s threat was to be taken seriously. ‘Now!’ Harold shouted when the silence and stillness started to last too long for his liking. He raised his fist again as a sign that he really intended to hurt Roger if his son was not to disappear out of his sight within the blink of an eye, and Brian, after having flashed Roger a desperate glance and having received a ‘please, go!’ from his partner, turned around and rushed upstairs again. Roger caught a glimpse of how Brian covered his mouth in what seemed to be shock while he disappeared to his room or whatever place he had been before the fight broke out right in front of his house, and that moment he realised that the only reason he ever might start regretting having come down here to tell Harold the truth, was going to be that Brian had been forced to see this situation.

With Brian out of the way now, Harold and Roger had no one to turn to than each other, so they looked at each other again in silence, but still with the most contemptuous face they could manage.

A change in atmosphere took place soon enough, though. There must have been something in Roger’s eyes - a glimpse that revealed to Harold that Roger knew he was right about Brian being terrified of him. Or maybe this instance with Brian interfering with their quarrel was the last straw that had broken the remains of what once had been Harold’s self-control (if he ever had any in the first place), or maybe there was still simply too much rage inside his mind that he needed to let go. Whatever the reason might have been, Harold’s fist that previously had been aimed at him as a threat to make Brian disappear from sight, now turned into a flat hand that crashed down on Roger’s left cheek with a power strong enough to make him see stars. He had to close his eyes to deal with the pain when it exploded all across the left side of his face, and he opened them just in time to see the second blow aimed at the other part of his face. It was even harder than the first one; it made Roger’s head clap back against the pebble stone garden path below him, and he had to oppress the urge to groan in pain. It hurt like crazy, surely enough, but he was not going to show this monster any sign of pain which would grant him the satisfaction that he was probably looking for by beating him.

Roger intended to push his attacker away from him or at least to bring up his hands to protect his face from the force, but when Harold continued to slap him across the face multiple times in a row, Roger found that there was nothing he could do to stop his angry hands from raining down. The power behind each blow was too strong to do anything to stop the assault from coming, and Roger found himself being unable to do anything but lay there and helplessly submit himself to whatever his attacked intended to do with his face, reminding himself that at least Brian was in safety now.  

‘You… came into my son’s life… lured him into being friends with your… your immoral intentions, and then you _ruined_ his education… his reputation… his life,’ Harold hissed between gritted teeth, each of the reproaches interspersed with another slap against his victim’s face. At first, they were indeed just slaps (as much as they could be called ‘just slaps’ when they were setting someone’s entire face on fire), but halfway through the sentence Roger felt the hand curling up into a first, which crashed down on his right eye and knocked his head back against the ground beneath him once again. A sharp pain shot as a jolt through the back of his head, but this pain was soon forgotten when the flat hand he had been slapped with before, curled up into a first that landed a powerful blow against his right eye. It made for a sickening sound that told Roger that he could expect a bruise in the area of his eye or probably even a black eye to pop up somewhere along the afternoon, especially when the first crashed down on the exact same place the moment after while Harold continued his trail of reproaches towards him.

Roger weakly attempted to move his head to the side - perhaps to see if the muscles in his neck were still working after this act of violence that was being committed against him and which was still going strong to that very moment. It turned out to be a bad move, because Brian’s father had no changed the angle of his fist, and instead of punching him in the eye, his hand now ended up against his nose. Normally this might now have been that much of a problem, but given that Roger’s nose was still sensitive from the bleeding he had gotten in a clumsy attempt to fight off one of the prison guards who was nearly jumping on top of him at the police station two days ago, the blow against it instantly was too much for the wound that was just starting to heal. The moment Harold’s fist connected with his nose, blood started gusting out of it, leaving a trail of the red substance both on Roger’s face and on his attacker’s knuckles.

When the brood instantly started running down Roger’s nose and towards his ear - he was still lying on the cobblestone garden path, after all - the assault suddenly came to an end. It was probably the blood that made Harold realise just how much he had let himself go in the heat and anger of the moment; Roger could swear he saw a fickle of disgust and misunderstanding towards his own actions passing over the man’s face when he sat back to give him space, hiding the hand of which the knuckles were covered with the blood of his victim’s nose behind his back. There was a bit of a silence between the two of them, in which Roger tried to catch his breath and Harold glanced back and forth between the blood on his victim’s face and that on his own hands, quite literally.

‘Congrats,’ Roger whispered hoarsely once he had regained the power to speak, slowly moving his hand up to his nose to feel at the blood that continued to tickle down from it. He looked at his fingers, covered in the red liquid, before he looked Harold straight in the eyes again as he said: ‘I was wrong. Your son isn’t afraid of you. It’s more than that, you’re his worst _nightmare_.’

The fist was up in the air again within no time, ready to attack and crash down on him any moment, but Roger knew that it was not actually going to happen again. Maybe it was the look of fear in Harold’s eyes, the disgust towards himself that he had seen on his face just a moment ago, that made Roger believe the man was unable to hit him again, whether he wanted to or not. And if he was all mistaken and Harold _was_ going to lash out at him again after all, it didn’t even matter to Roger anymore. He knew that he had touched something deep inside of this man by telling him he was the figure of doom in his own son’s nightmares, that his son was terrified of him and had been covering the truth with endless series of lies just in order to be accepted by him, and if Harold’s solution to his own problems was not to better himself but to hit the person who had pointed out his deficiencies, then so be it.

Nothing happened, though - as expected - and Roger, who felt like he was beyond care and fear by now, brought his index finger and middle finger up to his nose again to immerse them in blood again, before he reached out his hand towards the person still on top of him. Harold didn’t do nothing to the approaching hand, to his surprise; he just stared at it when it came closer to him, only held in his breath for a few awfully long seconds when Roger smeared the warm blood across his cheek.

‘Here. As a trophy for your victory,’ he managed with the slightest hint of a sneering smile. ‘I hope you’re proud of yourself.’

Silence for a few seconds again; a pair of narrowed eyes staring in Roger’s direction (something he luckily had grown used to by now) and the hand that was not stained with blood clasping around the hem of his shirt. Roger just looked back at his rival with a look that almost dared him to jump at him again. Harold could deny it, but Roger could feel in every fibre of his body that he had won this match, and that attacking him again would only mark Harold as the loser even more than the blood on his hands and face were already doing right now.

It seemed like Harold was starting to realise this truth also by now, because he refrained from lashing out of his enemy this time. He pulled Roger closer to his face for a moment, but soon thought better of it and let him go all at once, causing Roger to almost bump with the back of his head against the cobblestones below him again if it hadn’t been for his renewed strength that was the result of knowing he had won this sick game Harold had wanted to play with him.

‘Get the fuck out of here,’ Harold hissed at him, the blood on his face making him look both dangerous and vulnerable at the same time. ‘And if you ever show your face here again, I’ll make sure it was the last time.’

‘I’m sure you will,’ Roger replied scornfully while Harold finally climbed off of him, got back on his feet, patted the dust of the knees of his trousers, and gave him one more dirty look before he disappeared into the house again, obviously trying to look more confident than he actually was when he walked off. Even though he had managed to beat the intruder to his domain up without being hit himself, Roger knew that the blow to his ego and integrity was currently weighing Harold down much more than a black eye could have managed. He tried to comfort himself with this thought and that of that no matter how Brian’s father had threatened to put an end to his life at the end of their fight, this was not going to stop him from showing up to Brian’s house as soon as justice would be on their side, when parliament would have decided to put an end to these ridiculous restraining orders, and when Brian and he could love again without being threatened, persecuted, or imprisoned for it.

Roger was seriously planning to stick to these intentions, but it turned out that showing his face here again was going to take place a little bit sooner than parliament could legally allow him to do. While busy trying to get up from the cold ground, he found that the top window at the right side of the house was opened, while he was sure it had not been that way when he had first arrived at the house. He squinted his eyes a bit for better view, and soon discovered that there was someone behind the glass of the window. Roger didn’t even have to do any further investigation to make sure it was Brian; he simply knew it could be no one else than him. Not only was it the probability of Brian being behind the window after having been the only one Roger was aware of had rushed upstairs, but it was also simply his heart that told him that no one else apart from his boyfriend would be paying attention to him now that Harold had slammed the door close behind him and but doing so had marked the end of his violent collision with him. Only Brian would be here to support him and talk to him even though it was against all the rules they had been set up with. If he hadn’t known so already, this was the moment when Roger was positive Brian and he belonged together.

Brian carefully opened the window of his room a little further, and Roger’s eyes in the meanwhile flashed towards the living room as to make sure no one was seeing this forbidden interaction between Brian and him, but he luckily found that the curtains had been whisked close. He assumed that Ruth had found herself being unable to look at the sight of her husband attacking someone right in front of her door, and had shut the image of it out of her attention by pulling back the curtains. Once again, Roger could understand her train of thoughts, and right now, it was absolutely convenient to find that the closed curtains prevented people from inside the house from seeing what was going on in their garden now that Brian had opened the window, ready to be in touch with him.

Roger suddenly remembered that he was still on the floor, so he hoisted himself up, ignored the pain tangible in most of his body parts, wiped the blood away from his face with the sleeve of his shirt - a shirt he was afraid he could throw right into the trash bin the moment he would return home. He took a few cautious steps towards the side of the house were Brian was sitting behind the window right, enough to close part of the distance between them but not enough to stand in front of the window, where his silhouette visible through the curtains could betray his presence to Brian’s parents. He looked up at Brian again once he had found a perfect spot to stand and saw the painful look on Brian’s face now that he got to see him all beaten up and looking the way he currently did.

‘It’s not as bad as it looks like,’ Roger lied. In all honesty, felt like his entire body was still aflame, but saying this of course was not going to comfort his partner; not to say, it was probably only going to make him worry even more about him, which was the last thing Roger wanted Brian to think about while living under the same roof with a literal psychopath. ‘Brian? Brian, are you okay?’ Roger hissed towards him only just loudly enough for Brian to hear. After all, the last thing he wanted was have his parents overhear them and landing Brian into even deeper troubles than he probably already was in.

Still, Roger whispering at him already seemed to be too dangerous to Brian, who laid his index finger against his lips to urge him to be quiet. Roger obeyed, but was unsure what Brian had opened the window for and was looking down at him if it wasn’t to speak to him. His confusion grey only deeper when Brian spied around his room for a moment, after which he disappeared from Roger’s sight.

‘Brian? Brian!’ he whispered insistently when Brian had left his previous spot at the window, wondering what the hell his boyfriend was doing. He wasn’t going to leave him here all alone like this after just having gotten his hopes up to finally get to talk again, now would he? It would be nothing for Brian to leave him hanging like this, but Roger had to admit that opening the window and attempting to get in touch with him even though they both knew it was strictly forbidden as long as their restraining orders were in place, was something that had already seemed a bit too brave for his shy and careful boyfriend. Brian had probably seriously planned to talk to him, but had changed his mind when he thought of the risks of it. Roger couldn’t blame his boyfriend, especially not when he also took into account the thought of what would happen if his father was to find out about their secret encounter, but it still was more than just a little disappointing to him to think that they were finally going to be as much ‘together’ as they could be in the current situation-

Before he could even finish his train of thoughts, Brian appeared behind the window again, and Roger felt his heart skipping a beat out of excitement. He _knew_ Brian wouldn’t desert him all of the sudden, and him coming back proved that he was just as devoted to their relationship as Roger was. Brian felt his appreciation towards his boyfriend grow even stronger when the astronomy student held up a pencil and a small notebook, which Roger thought indeed was going to be an amazing solution to keep their contact quiet. Of course he rather would have spoken to Brian directly, but this was probably a safer option, and it also certainly worked to prove Brian’s inventiveness.

Brian placed the notebook on the white window frame and started scribbling down his first message to Roger. When he was done writing, he tore the piece of paper out of the small book and folded it up a few times, but he seemed hesitant when he was about to throw the piece of paper out of the window. Roger shared his cautiousness; after all, the last thing they wanted was a piece of paper swirling through the garden and ending up on the grass in front of the window, where he would have to crawl towards with the thought of Brian’s parents being able to see him through the curtains in the back of his mind. Roger thought back about middle school and how they used to deliver written messages to the right receiver in class, and he came up with an idea. He formed two bowls with his fingers and placed them against each other to make them signify a sphere, and Brian got the message that he needed to form a ball out of the paper to throw it into a more specific direction.

Brian unfolded the piece of paper and crumpled it up into a little ball, which he carefully threw into Roger’s direction. Roger skilfully fished the crumpled paper out of the air and unfolded it right away to reveal the message Brian had written for him in the boyish stationary Roger fell in love with more every time he got to see it.

_We shouldn’t talk now, if anyone hears us we’ll be in huge troubles. I’ll write and you gesture back at me, alright?_

Roger folded the paper up as carefully as Brian had done in the first place, as if the paper was part of the Holy Scripture that needed to be preserved with all possible carefulness - and, in all honesty, this first written note from Brian since the moment they had been forcibly separated by law, indeed felt sacred to him.

When he had stuffed the scrap of paper into his back pocket, Roger gave Brian the thumbs-up he knew his boyfriend needed to feel comfortable going through with this and start working on his second message, which he did right away. Roger waited somewhat impatiently for Brian to finish his new scrap of paper - perhaps because standing out here in front of the house he was not supposed to come to writing notes with the person he was not supposed to be in touch with, but the probability of him being impatient because he couldn’t wait hearing from Brian again, was even bigger than the impatient the fear was causing. Luckily for Roger, it was a shorter note this time than the previous one, and he soon was able to hold up his hands and catch the ball of paper between them to see what Brian had written to him this time.

_I feel so guilty about what my dad just did to you_

_I wish I would have stepped up for you_

Roger felt his heart sink in when he read the note and had to reread it to make sure he really had read it correctly, even though he already knew he understood very well what Brian meant by it. It just made Roger feel so bad to know that his boyfriend felt guilty for something he could not have done anything about; he would not have stood a chance to his father in the state of lividness Harold had been in, and the last thing Roger would have wanted was for Brian to risk his own safety for him. _He_ was the one who had travelled down here against better judgement, had asked to speak to him father against better judgement, and had allowed the discussion to develop into the fight by making the cynical comments he knew right away Harold wasn’t going to appreciate (nor would anyone probably, when directed towards them). Roger still did not feel sorry for having done any of this, only that Brian had to become part of it and be stuck between his will to help him and the knowledge of what his father was capable of when angry like he had been, and that his decision to stay out of it was causing him to feel guilty right now. Roger wished he could tell him he shouldn’t feel guilty, that everything had been his own fault and that Brian shouldn’t worry about him. But now that he couldn’t use his voice, didn’t have a pen and paper like Brian was using, and thus had to deal with the situation with his hands only, all he could do was making a forward movement with his hand as if he was throwing something away, in this case the argument Brian had made about feeling guilty.

Brian nodded weakly, not seeming entirely convinced by Roger’s gestures, but he started working on a new note anyway. He threw it at Roger’s direction, but Roger was a bit slower to catch and unfold it this time around, afraid that the newly arrived message was going to continue on the topic Brian had brought up in the last one. When he opened it, however, he wished he would have fished it out of the air as fast as he could instead.

_I love you so much and I wish we could be together right now more than ever_

This notation surely made up for the heartbreak Roger was still feeling from having read the previous one; it instantly made him glow, both on the inside and on the outside in the form of his cheeks turning a shade darker than they had been before. Of course, Brian and he knew they loved each other madly, but they didn’t get to say it too often; they had been surrounded by people who could form potential dangers to their relationship and even to them as individuals, as had been shown over the course of the last few days, all too often to talk about loving each other in public all too often. But now here they were, with Brian standing at the window and Roger in the garden below him (vaguely reminding the biology student of a trashy low-budget Romeo and Juliet movie he had been watching one night when there had been nothing else on the TV), exchanging love notes to each other all out in the open and yet feeling like they were the only one to exist on the entire planet.

Roger wished he could have reciprocated the message in a proper way, but without speech nor writing, the options were once again limited. He considered blowing a hand kiss in Brian’s direction, but eventually deemed that to be too immature, so he settled with pressing the note closely against his heart with both hands to show Brian what it meant to him to receive this message. This seemed to get the point across to his partner, who placed both his hands over his own heart also, and they stood looking at each other with as much as a smile as they could produce in a situation where they were momentarily united but knew they would have to go their separate ways again sooner or later.

‘Sooner or later’ unfortunately turned out to be ‘sooner’; before they had even managed to stand and look at each other for a time span of, let’s say, ten seconds, their peaceful moment together was already brutally interrupted by a factor Roger felt stupid about for forgetting about so soon.

‘Brian Harold May!’

The voice of Brian’s father was ear-piercingly sharp and angry, managing to make both his son and his son’s partner freeze at just the sound of it. They stared at each other for another second, but this time not with a look of infatuation on their face, but with one of terror, not knowing whether Harold had seen the two of them out there or if he hadn’t and simply had already been planning to verbally lash out at his son - hoping it was going to stay at verbally, that was. Either way, both of them could feel by the tension in Harold’s voice that Brian was going to be in deep, deep troubles.

Roger followed Brian’s nearly terrified gaze when the boy craned his neck to what Roger expected was the direction of the door, and he could hear his creaking voice through the opened window when Brian eventually replied with a soft but most of all shaky: ‘Yes…?’

‘Downstairs at this instant!’ followed as a second demand from the obviously still aggravated man, loud enough for the neighbours and possibly they people living next to them to hear. Brian once again seemed unsure of what to do; his father’s voice made it pretty damn clear that there was no room for disobedience or even taking a second longer than absolutely necessary to get himself downstairs. But then he looked at Roger, and the younger boy could see in Brian’s eyes that he wanted to stay with him at least for a little longer, no matter what the consequences of this were going to be.

‘ _Go_ ,’ Roger whispered at Brian in the hope that it would convince him to move downstairs as soon as possible anyway. The last thing he wanted was for Brian to get himself into even more troubles with his father, which was why he was feeling mixed emotions when Brian bent down over his notepad once more to write him a last message, by doing so only prolonging the time before he could move downstairs and face a man who hopefully wasn’t too furious at him. He could see by the rough gestures of Brian’s right hand that the student was rushing to get the message finished and out of the window to its receiver; he probably intended to listen to his father’s order after he had finished his note, which was a thought that both calmed Roger down and made him worry even more than before in the first place.

In his rush to get the message out before it was too late and his father might come rushing upstairs himself to get him, Brian crumpled it up and threw it out of the window in such a hurry that there was no time for directing it well this time. The paper landed about a metre in front of Roger, who quickly reached forwards to pick it up from the cobblestone surface. By the time he had gotten to his feet again, the window Brian had been standing at earlier, was empty, signifying that his boyfriend had gone down to face his father.

Roger felt a shiver down his back when he even thought about what might be awaiting Brian once he got downstairs. He knew that the only thing he could do for Brian at this point in time was to read his last letter and listen or obey to whatever it was going to say. Before he could open it, however, he suddenly found that he still held the previous message in hands, a scrap of paper of which he noticed only now that he had crumpled it between his hands even more than it already had been before in his moment of nervousness when Harold’s voice had been disrupting their secret meetup.

Roger folded and put the paper into his pocket with even more carefulness than he had been doing with the notes before this one, intending to give this declaration of love a special spot on his nightstand next to his bed. Something to look at when he was sitting upright in his bed at three AM when the whole situation with the police, with the charges, with the upcoming trial, with being away from Brian was keeping him out of sleep for most of the night.

Brian’s footsteps were audible when he waked downstairs in what sounded to be like a hesitant tempo, reminding Roger of the letter he still had to unfold and the message he still had to read. Roger quickly decrumpled the paper ball he was holding and let his letters fly over the this time somewhat sloppy looking sentences, reading it and reading it again.

_Come to my window at half past eleven tonight. I’ll be waiting for you._

Roger could not believe Brian was the one to make such a dangerous yet brave suggestion. Brian had  always been the careful one in their relationship while he had been the troublemaker (well, to be fair, the label of ‘troublemaker’ applied to practically all aspects of life, and not just to his relationship). Brian had always been the one to remind Roger to be careful, the one who came up with the anonymous letters, the one to prevent Roger from getting too close from him at school or in other public settings, the one who would even refuse holding hands for half a second when they were all alone in one of the alleys they usually met up with at school even if it was after school time… and now this usually so shy and cautious boy was the one to invite Roger to come over to his bedroom close to midnight, when his parents would probably be vast asleep and unaware of what kind of illegal activities their son was engaging in by breaking their restraining order and meeting up with the person his family and the entire law system had banned from seeing. Roger could hardly believe it, but the stationary in front of him was definitely Brian’s - a bit sloppier than usual, as he had observed earlier, which was all a result of the hurry he had been in when writing the note, but still unmistakably his handwriting. Roger had watched him write the note, toss it down the window; it really was Brian who had come up with this idea, whether he could wrap his mind around it or not.

Roger knew there was no time for him to stand there and contemplate if this really had been Brian’s idea and what he had to do with it; he had to get out of the garden, out of sight, and probably even out of the entire street in case anything would happen that could make him visible to the family inside the house again. For all he knew, Brian’s father might storm out of the house either to leave himself or to kick his son out of the door (which Roger did not think was likely with Brian’s parents sheltering attitude towards him, but which he still could not completely rule out as a possibility) - and if he would be around when something along these lines would happen, Roger knew he might not leave the place without a fractured bone at the very least.

Yes, it really probably was better to get away from here - for now then, that was. Because no matter what the risk would be, Roger was determined to return to this place and stand right below Brian’s window, like he had been asked to do, at half past eleven. If Brian was willing to take such a risk to be with him, even if it would be just for fifteen minutes in the confinement of his bedroom where they would have to whisper in order not to wake up his parents and spare themselves from troubles on top of troubles, then Roger was willing to take this risk too; not to say, he was ready to grasp it with both hands as if it was his last chance of survival. Because in all honesty, the thought of being together with Brian was the only thing that got him through the night these days, the only thought that kept him going and made him want to survive this difficult period in time. So of there was anything he could do to be with him, he was going to seize the chance, even if it had to be at eleven thirty in a room adjacent to that of the man who had just seriously beaten him up. _Especially_ if it had to be at eleven thirty in a room adjacent to that of the man who had just seriously beaten him up, to show him that Brian was a person on his own who could make decisions on his own, and that if he belonged to anyone in the world, it was to _him_ and not to his father and his evil ways.

Practical problems shot through Rogers mind for a short moment when the initial euphoria of the plan was starting to subside, such as whether there was still public transport going into the direction of bloody Feltham at half past eleven, or how to jump three metres up a wall and enter a room through the window without waking anyone up. He soon after ended up pushing these thoughts out of his mind, though; first of all, because he was sure he was going to find a way; he was prepared to cycle or even walk to Feltham that evening, and he would find a road ladder or whatever in his father’s garage. His father wasn’t going to be home until five o’clock anyway, so he might as well drop by to sneak something helpful out of his house and bring it back before he would even miss it.

The second reason why Roger decided to leave the problems regarding how to get to- and inside the house that evening for what they were right now, was because he heard a voice emerging from the house he still was standing in front of. It was loud, angry, and undeniably belonged to Harold. A second voice joined, sounding angry but not to the point as the first one, and certainly not as loud as it, and Roger knew it could be no one else than his boyfriend. He felt his muscles tense for a moment; he had never seen Brian angry and  had never heard him shout, because his partner simply had never seemed to be the type to engage in that kind of behaviour. But then again, every person had someone, some activity, or some situation that could make them lose their calm, and if this situation with his father was what made Brian raise his voice, Roger could do nothing but agree with him.

Hearing the two men shouting at each other made Roger feel bad for Brian on the one side for the obvious reasons, but on the other side he was glad and relieved to find that his boyfriend had the courage to stand up against the man who was trying to terrorise him with all that was in his might, to push him back into the mould he had been working to make him fit into for years. Just when Roger told himself Brian would stand his ground and was about to use the tumult inside the house as an opportunity to sneak away before it was too late, he was distracted by unexpected sounds coming from the residence. There was a sound of something falling, perhaps even of something being smashed; a high-pitched woman’s voice, undeniably Ruth, screeching by now while the other voices continued to raise in loudness. Then was a dull thud inside the house, followed by a sharp slap, which seemed to make everyone fall silent for a just a while. Just for a few seconds, before footsteps made their way upstairs again, leaving one person to sob and one person to continue his unintelligible but obviously hateful shouting in the living room.

Roger could only guess which sounds were produced by which person, could only guess what that dull sound had been, but he had more than just a faint notion of how to match the actions with their actors, and it made him feel sick to the stomach. He wished so desperately that he could do something to help Brian, anything at all, but he knew that the best thing he could probably do for him was leave right now and show up at the time Brian had written down for him on the last note he had sent him before the hell had broken loose downstairs.

Holding this last scrap of paper in the palm of his hand instead of in the pocket of his jeans, and hoping with all of his might that he was wrong about what he thought about what had been going down inside the house just a moment ago, Roger hurried off the cobblestone path, out of the garden, and left behind the house to which he knew he would secretly return before the clock could strike midnight to announce yet another cruel day.


	5. Chapter 5

_I can hear the soft sleeping of the boy that I love_

_As he lies here besides me, asleep with the night_

_And his hair in a fine mist floats on my pillow_

_Reflecting the glow of the winter moonlight_

_But we’ve got to creep down the alley way_

_Fly down the highway_

_Before they come and catch us well be gone_

_Somewhere they can’t find us_

_Oh people, you don’t know what we’ve done_

_We’ve committed a crime, we’ve broken the law-_

The music stopped playing mid-chorus when Brian lifted up the stylus and put it down on its place next to the still-spinning vinyl copy of Simon and Garfunkel’s most recent hit album. He found himself being unable to listen to the song he had been playing for two days straight any longer, but was unsure for which reason. Either it was because he felt his headache growing with the minute, or because it reminded him too much of the situation he was finding his partner and himself in at the moment. The idea of having Roger lying next to him in bed, which was then being pushed aside by the sudden plan of leaving home headlong in the middle of the night to flee for the crime they had committed and the law they had broken… The more he thought about it, the more he realised just how hard this song was hitting him right now. It made him want to hold Roger tight, tell him he loved him, before he would take him by the hand and disappear with him to whatever place no one could find them, as the song suggested.

In all honesty, Brian had considered it. The idea had crossed his mind multiple times, the idea giving Roger a sign and a place to meat up, waiting for the right moment to be able to sneak out of the door, and simply heading off between the two of them. For the love of God, he had even considered to not have Roger come into his room that evening, but him going down to Roger and sneak out together while the entire street was asleep. In theory, it seemed like a better plan to Brian than sitting out their current situation and waiting to be imprisoned. But then reality came crashing down on him again, reminding him of just how unrealistic his wild plans were going to be.

Where on earth where they to go, what would they have to take with them, where would they sleep? And where could they find a place with no people around whatsoever, where they still could live without starving, dehydrating, or dying in any other unpleasant way? Could they even find their way to a safe location before the cops would be onto them? They were free to go wherever they wanted right now - as long as it was within Great Britain and not in the presence of each other - until their case would be brought to court. But if they were to disappear and be reported as missing (or having ran off, more likely), they would be tracked down and had to spend the rest of the time in prison. And even if they were willing to take the risk and revolt against law and society, Brian knew there was one more obstacle that would make escaping even harder. Or actually, there were two: both of his parents, who were watching over him day and night, tracking his every move and blink and breath. How was he ever supposed to run off to a place far away from society if he could not even manage to find his way out of the front door?

Switching off the record player, Brian watched as the vinyl slowly lost its spinning speed and eventually stopped turning altogether, allowing him to carefully lift up the record and put it back in its paper cover. He put it down on top of his modest stack of LP’s, but soon after hid it somewhere in the middle of the pile between _Rubber Soul_ and _Between the Buttons_ to hide it from his view. He couldn’t even stand the sight of the two artist displayed at the cover of the vinyl anymore, which displayed the two artists with their back towards the camera while they wandered towards whatever place the dirt path that stretched itself out before them would take them. How Brian wished Roger and he could be in their places; to simply run down that unpaved road and follow it to whatever spot in the middle of nowhere it would bring them, a place where they could be alone and free from the society that was making life hard on them in every way it possibly could at the moment.

The image of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel on their way to freedom seemed to permanently have settled in his mind, because Brian could not get rid of the mental image even after he stood up from his desk and the turntable and stack of LP’s positioned on the left side of it, he could still see it as if he was holding the album cover in front of his face with both his hands. In an attempt to get rid of the image, the song, and all the wild thoughts and unrealistic plans that came with him, Brian decided to bring himself back to reality by opening the door of his wardrobe closet and looking at his own face in the mirror hanging on the inside of said door. Just the sight of his own pale face, the bags beneath his eyes, the entangled curls that hadn’t properly been combed out in what felt like ages, made Brian realise that he really was trapped in this situation, and that a way out was going to be much, much harder than simply jumping out of his bedroom window and running off with his lover.

The thing that reminded him of his entrapment more than his searing headache, messy hair, or pale skin could ever do, was the fact that the foundation around his left eye was starting to come off, leaving the purple-bluish bruise beneath it at the surface and visible for everyone to see. Brian wasn’t sure if the fading of the foundation crème and powder was a result of the age of the makeup product he had stolen out of his mother’s bathroom cabinet, or if the tears he had been crying had caused the substance to lose its grip on the area Brian was desperately trying to cover up both for himself and for the rest of the world, no matter how small his world was at the moment now that he was not allowed to leave the house.

Brian turned around and reached over to the small glass bottle of foundation that he had placed down on the nightstand of his bed, hidden beneath the short, iron legs of his alarm clock so his mother wouldn’t see it if she was to look through his room for whatever reason. In the current situation, Brian had no idea how far his parents could go in their attempts to either explain or preferably prevent what his mother called ‘homosexual behaviour’.

The bottle opened easily by screwing the lid off it, and Brian dipped his finger in the skin coloured liquid, before reaching it out to his eye and carefully press it against his lower eyelid. Just the feeling of skin on skin gave him flashbacks to three days ago, when upon being brought back home by two police officers, his father had pulled him inside the house and hit him a black eye. The force behind the blow had been strong enough to knock Brian over to the door behind him and make him lose consciousness for a period of time neither of his parents had been willing to confess to him.

Said black eye had finally seemed to have been starting to lose its deeply blue colour and even disappear slightly from the corners earlier that day. However, his father’s fist having crashed down on the exact same spot that morning after he had just knocked Roger’s nose into a bleeding mess, had been erasing the little progress the wound had been making so far. Spots that had been blue before were turning purple and blackish again, and though the eyelids were not significantly swollen or anything, Brian could feel a tinge of pain flashing through them whenever he blinked. If he concentrated deeply, he could even still feel which of his father’s knuckle had made contact with which part of his eyes. It was not exactly Brian’s most favourite thing to think about, but besides thinking about how fucking unfair life currently was, there was not so much more for Brian to do apart from pondering all day long now that he wasn’t allowed to go to school anymore.

When his father had first told him he wasn’t going to Imperial College anymore as long as Roger was in that place, Brian had simply internally rolled his eyes. As if Roger was going to quit his studies at the place because Harold was boycotting his son’s education as long as he was wandering around there. As if either Roger or he were going to put their education to a halt at the school they had met and had been so happy together. Unfortunately for Brian, what his father had been meaning with this was not that he was going to have to stay home from school and wait until Roger’s name would vanish from the enrolment lists. Harold had meant that he had taken matters into his own hands and removed Brian for Imperial to instead enrol him into a university at the other side of town, one Brian had never even heard of before. He soon found out why this was, by the way - they were a university of arts, for the love of God. Not that there was anything wrong with a university of arts,  but what on earth was _he_ , as a beta student, supposed to do there? Drop those years he had given his life and soul to astrophysics as if they had been nothing and study interaction between adolescents in sociology class? Comparing grammar patterns in Russian and Hungarian in Slavic Language Studies? Reading up on how the stock crash of 1929 had destabilised the Weimar Republic and had allowed Adolph Hitler to seize the power in history class? The whole situation would have been hilarious, really, had it not been as fucking _sad_ as it was.

Pushing all of these thoughts aside, Brian gripped onto the door handle of his wardrobe to give himself something to squeeze while applying the makeup on his black eye, softly massaging the liquid foundation onto the skin that felt like it started bruising even more with every touch of his fingertips. He would not have bothered to go through all this additional pain if he had just been with his parents for the rest of the day (or week, or month, or for whatever time span they intended to excluded from the rest of the world). But there was a possibility Roger was coming over that night, and Brian didn’t want his boyfriend to have to see this. He didn’t want Roger to worry about him any more than he probably already was at the moment.

With this prospect in mind, Brian finished up his foundation, topped it off with a featherlight layer of powder (it was amazing how fast one could change into a true makeup artist if the situation demanded these skills from someone), and went to sit down on his bed. He lay down on the mattress, but, soon after feeling restless, he sat up again and opened the drawer of his nightstand. He flicked through its contents and eventually pulled out an old book about ancient Egypt society - a topic he had been obsessed with as a child, and a book he therefore never had had the heart for to throw it away - and which currently served to hide the letters Roger and he had been sending each other the last two months. Each letter, complete in envelope, had been placed between random pages; Brian pulled out the first envelope he could find, delicately took out the precious letter inside of it, and let his eyes run over it. He could tell right away that it was one of the earlier letters probably dated back from the summer break, when the tone of conversation had been a sometimes somewhat awkward combination of friendship and beginning hints of flirting and romance that never failed to make Brian smile when he looked back at these days. Even now, with his black eye throbbing from just having been touched, his parents sitting downstairs, and a police cell probably being reserved for him for when he would be convicted of gross indecency, reading Roger’s not so subtle hints about how much he loved being with him managed to bring a smile back to Brian’s face. This was exactly why he had been pulling out the messages these last few days - reading these letters was the only thing that managed to keep him from breaking down. Reading these letters, together with the knowledge that Roger might be coming over later that night.

Of course, Brian could never know for sure if his partner really was going to end up standing before his window later that evening; after all, he never had been able to see Roger either agreeing with or objecting against the plan he had tossed down on a piece of paper before disappearing from sight. He also only later had been realising that public transport, climbing all the way to the second floor, and not waking up his parents were all factors that made taking the risk of visiting this much more unattractive - or that was, it would have made taking the risk that much more unattractive to him. To Roger, however, all these dangers might actually add up to his excitement about coming over. Roger had always been one for taking risks and throwing himself into dangerous situations, such as showing up at the bedroom of the person he had a restraining order with. This did not yet mean that Roger automatically was to be found there were the greatest danger was taking place, but he did seem to be drawn to it rather strongly… And Brian knew for a fact that Roger was drawn to _him_ , and had no troubles taking great pains or risks being with him. If he had come out to their house to fight with his father in broad daylight, then surely coming over at night when no one could see them was going to be too much to ask for him, now was it?

The sound of the door to the hallway opening caught his attention, and Brian was quick to push the letter and its envelope back into the book. He did not dare wasting any time on neatly folding the letter into its cover and risking not having stuffed the book away again by the time his parents would have made it upstairs. He indeed heard their footsteps approaching the second floor by the time he had managed to put the book back to where it belonged. He glanced up at the clock above his wardrobe to find that it was already almost eleven o’clock, and realised that his parents probably wouldn’t appreciate it if they were to find him sitting all dressed up on his bed at what they thought was time to go to bed.

Brian knew that he could not sneak out to the bathroom to brush his teeth or such without being seen, so he simply resorted to pulling his shirt over his head, throwing it on the chair at the foot end of his bed, and crawled under the blankets to trick his parents into believing he was ready to sleep.

There was some stumbling towards the room next to him, some talking Brian couldn’t make out, before steps towards his door announced that someone was about to enter his room. He expected to see his mother, but it turned out to be his father, which he knew shouldn’t surprise him as much as it did anymore by now. It had always been his mother who would simply open the door and whisper a ‘good night’ at him through the years, and his father would stay out of his room. However, since he had returned from the police station with the charges and everything, his father seemed to feel the need to constantly check on what he was doing. Brian was sure his father had opened the door, looked through his room, and left without saying a word at least thrice during the course of the evening, and he could also already tell that this time was not going to be different.

As expected, his father soon came to check on him, doing not much more than flashing him a pensive glance while he scanned through his son’s room as to look for any sort of irregularities that of course were not to be found - not _yet_ , that was. When he seemed to have deemed the coast to be clear, he disappeared into the hallway without a word, just as silently as he had arrived. His mother was a bit harder to shake off, though; she actually entered his room and sat down at the foot of Brian’s bed dressed in her floral nightgown and with her perm rollers already tightly wrapped into her hair. Brian could see in the half-darkness that she still felt awkward around him. By nature she was a very affectionate woman who never had any problems with giving him a hug or a kiss on the cheek at any given moment, but she seemed to be keeping her distance at the moment, and it took no Sherlock Holmes to figure out the reason behind her hesitance. His mother had been deeply shocked when Brian had been brought home by the police, and the reason why had literally seemed to have torn her heart into pieces. She had been crying, sobbing, weeping, and wondering out loud what she had done wrong as a parent and what she had done to deserve this ever since, to the level where it literally surprised Brian that she was managing to keep herself together right now.

Brian gave himself a moment to look at his mother, at her somewhat thinning brown hair beneath those perm rollers, her fragile figure, and the even more fragile expression on her face when she looked at him as if she was contemplating whether she should speak to him, and if, what she should say to him. Brian wished he could do something to support her, to make her feel better, but he knew that there was nothing he could say that would be true, helpful to her, or fair towards Roger and himself. He could tell her that everything was going to be normal again soon, but this would be a lie: the charges hanging above his head were soon going to make for even more unrest into his mother’s otherwise peaceful life. Telling her there was a chance he was going to be acquitted would have been nothing but giving his mother false hope. They didn’t stand a chance to be acquitted, not as long as those damn pictures and largely false witness statements were floating around to speak against them. He could tell her he was not the only gay men in existence, but this was also not going to be particularly helpful to her. She already had been shocked to the point of endless crying by hearing that he was gay, let alone how she would react if Brian would pull out the estimated percentage of non-straight people in their country that he had read up on in the library in an attempt to come to terms with his sexuality himself a few months ago.

As a last option he could tell her it all had been a mistake, like she had begged him to do when she had been showing him the newspaper article claiming his crimes. He could tell it was all one big mistake, that he was straight as could be and that the events with Roger either had been miscalculations by the police who had been accusing them falsely, or that they had been taken place indeed, but that they hadn’t meant a thing. That he had let himself be persuaded into things he didn’t support himself by Roger, that all he had done had been to test out what it was like as a part of typical rebellious behaviour for people his age (which he had never engaged in before, but still) and that he regretted it deeply right now. That he wished he could turn back the time to before Roger and he had started ‘experimenting’ and go back to his normal, peaceful life.

But no matter how much he wanted to comfort his mother, Brian was unable to push himself to this extent regardless of how badly she needed consolation. He could _and_ would not allow himself or anyone else to sweep his love for Roger under the carpet for the sake of someone else’s peace of mind; he would never lie or be untrue about his feelings towards his boyfriend just to please an outsider, even if it was his own family. No matter how much he loved his mother and no matter how much he hated to see her in pain, Brian had to pick the side of the only person he knew would always have his back. Especially now that his own parents had shown him that even they were not always on his side in humanitarian matters like these; they hardly seemed to _look_ at him as human anymore.

‘Your father is leaving for work tomorrow morning,’ his mother interrupted his thoughts softly. ‘If you would just… stay in your room until he does. That might save all of us from some unpleasant confrontations,’ she added even softer.

Brian was unsure how to feel about this proposal; on the one hand, he indeed preferred not to have to face his father at all at the moment, and already had been planning to stay in his room for as long as he could the morning after. But on the other side, he felt his heart sink in at just how deeply they had fallen to find themselves in a situation where his mother advised him and his father not to be in the same room together in order to avoid arguments or perhaps even a new round of violence. Regardless of what his father’s opinion about gay people was, and what his own opinion was on his father’s attitude, they should be able to look each other in the eyes and at the very least tolerate each other. Knowing that even this seemed to be too much to ask for at the moment, added up to the melancholia that had settled somewhere deep inside Brian’s mind.

Nevertheless, Brian still found himself nodding at his mother’s suggestion, not exactly in the mood to quarrel about the matter right now, and not wanting to do anything more to upset her. They ended up sitting next to each other, staring down at their own hands and not talking for a period of what felt like hours but could not have been more than a minute. His mother finally left him for the night after having told him to get some rest and having given his knee an hesitant and awkward pat through the duvet covers, which Brian was pretty sure marked the first time she had touched him since she had found out about his relationship with Roger.

The moment she left his room, Brian looked up to see that the clock was striking eleven, and realised that the moment of truth - finding out whether Roger would be showing up or not - would take place in around half an hour. He felt the tension starting to build up inside of him, and found himself in need of something to do, something to distract himself. He looked around his bedroom, but found that most activities he normally engaged in, were not going to be realistic to pick up at the moment. Turning on the music or picking up his guitar was going to make too much noise at the moment, he was too stressed for writing a letter to Roger (and, besides, writing was supposed to be unnecessary if Roger stuck to his plan of coming over that evening), and as for making homework… Since he had no idea whether his father had signed him up for social geography, Spanish language and culture, or journalism, let alone that he was in the possession of the required study books and tools, it didn’t seem much use to him to start working on this yet.

Brian threw all these ideas aside and touched up his makeup a little more, put on the shirt he had discarded earlier for the sake of decency, but then threw it off again and went through his wardrobe for a nicer one. He eventually settled with pulling out the book about ancient Egypt again and reread the letters for what must have been the tenth time over the course of the last days. The minutes passed slowly, and Brian felt his heart starting to beat faster every time the cursor further approached the ‘thirty’ on the lower side of the clock dial.

When it was five minutes to the time he had proposed, Brian couldn’t hold it anymore; he buried the book under his pillow, just in case, and walked over to the window. It was dark outside, hardly a single star in the sky visible, and the only light in the street was the poor glow which emerged from the lampposts that had been placed next to the sideways between every so many houses. He peered out of the window, where he could see most of the left side of the street, but there was not a single sign of movement or life whatsoever, let alone anything that would indicate Roger’s presence. He waited at the window without moving or even allowing himself to blink too often out of fear of missing the first sign of Roger’s arrival, but nothing happened. A minute passed by, a minute that soon turned into two, three, five, ten eventually…

Without glancing at the clock, Brian could already tell that it was far past half past eleven, and he felt the nervousness building up inside of him. His worst nightmare for this night seemed to be starting to come true, and there was nothing he could do about it apart from waiting here in front of the window and hoping desperately his boyfriend was going to arrive anyway, even if it was against better judgement.

 _Perhaps the thought of him showing up at all had been against better judgement all along,_ Brian thought to himself, which was a thought he had been trying desperately to oppress during the rest of the day. He had wanted and hoped and prayed so fiercely that his boyfriend would present himself at his house at the time he had assigned, that maybe he hadn’t looked at the complications of the whole plan enough. There was the issue with public transport, with how on earth to get him inside the room, and then the threat of his parents waking up from the noise his arrival and presence in their son’s bedroom would cause… The more he thought about how complicated all these factors made their secret setup, the more he realised it had been unrealistic, maybe even _stupid_ to ask from his partner to risk their remaining freedom for this impossible meeting.

On top of all of this, he suddenly realised that there was yet another reason why Roger might not have come over yet, nor that he was planning to do so now or ever again. While Harold had pushed his boyfriend to the ground and had positioned himself on top of him to prevent him from going anywhere, Brian had done nothing to help him prevent his father from beating the life out of him. He had gotten downstairs and told his father to stop, yes, but the moment his father had yelled at him to leave, he had obeyed almost instantly. During their written conversation moments later, Roger had insured him that it hadn’t been his fault, but what if the rest of the day had given him the time to re-evaluate the event, and come to the conclusion that Brian was, after all, to blame for not having stuck up for him? What if Roger was mad at him, furious even perhaps, and didn’t even want to come over anymore, now or ever again?

With one more glance at the empty street and an even worse feeling of guilt than before, Brian sighed and turned his back towards the window, deciding that it probably was about time he was going to let go of the remains of his hope that Roger was to suddenly appear from out of nowhere. It simply had been unrealistic all along, and he knew he had no one to blame but himself for having gotten his hopes up. He had never waited to see what Roger’s reaction to his suggestion had been, after all. He had thrown a demand at him without giving him the chance to agree or more likely to decline, and he was starting to feel guilty for having put his boyfriend in a situation where he was given no chance to decline ‘the offer’ that quite literally had been thrown into his direction.

Perhaps it was time to write Roger that letter, after all. To write him that he was sorry about having put him into a situation where he had been given expectations to meet while being unable to give his opinion on whether he wanted to be part of the whole plan or not. Brian looked at the notebook and the pencil that were still positioned on the windowsill, but he could not get himself to reach over and pick it up, let alone to write the apology letter now that he felt as bad as he did. He was going to write it, surely, but it seemed like a better plan to Brian to save his activity for the morning after. There was nothing for him to do anyway now that he had been ordered to stay in his room until his father had left the house, so he might as well write his apology to Roger tomorrow.

After having looked at the completely deserted street one more time, Brian decided it was time to probably go to sleep - or, if this was too much to ask for from his own body, to just lie down and stare at the ceiling above his bed for the upcoming hours, until his alarm clock would announce a time when it was socially acceptable to get out of bed again. And so Brian did - without caring to undress, brush his teeth, or make any other preparations for the night, he closed the curtain as to prevent himself from paying attention to it all the time, and got down on his bed for another lonely night of staring at the complete darkness that surrounded him, both literally and figuratively.

Then just as Brian was lying down on his mattress again with the book of ancient Egypt society clenched between his fingers - not so much for its contents, but for the letters placed between the pages filled with endless descriptions of the building process of the Great Pyramid of Giza - and closed his eyes, he could swear he could hear some kind of noise coming from outside the house. Or well, noise… It was hardly worth being called even as little as a sound, but in the stillness that surrounded him and his throbbing headache, the sound of even the ticking of the clock in his room was enough to make it feel like the Big Bang was chiming right next to his ear.

Brian focussed deeply to discover what the sound that had caught his attention had been. It could have been nothing but a cat passing the street, but something inside him told him that it was more than that. Without caring to hide the book this time, Brian got up, turned towards his window and carefully lifted up one corner of the curtain. There was nothing to be seen in the small angle of the glass Brian had just exposed, so he slowly slid the curtain aside. He peered into the street but once again there was nothing to be seen; still, the sound of steps on a soft surface, be it those of an animal or a person, were audible. It was confusing; the footsteps were too loud to be those of a cat, but too soft to be those of a human person. Brian frowned and opened the somewhat rusty looking bolt lock with as much carefulness and patience he could find in his body. He did not want to wake his parents up, but was eager to figure out what was going on. Maybe, just maybe, that of which he had already let go all of his hopes of, was going to happen after all…

He pushed against the window frame to open the window most carefully, brought his head up to be better able to see what was going on… and was only just in time to duck and avoid the cobblestone that flew right over his head and landed with a sharp pang against the door of the wardrobe closet on the opposite side of the room.

Brian felt his heart pounding in his chest while he slid down the wall below his window, needing more than just a second to recover from the shock of just almost having been attacked by a flying cobblestone entering his room through the opened window. He could, however, not give himself too much time to stay on the floor and wait until his heart rate would fall back into a more natural pattern. He knew that since cobblestones didn’t launch themselves into the air and all the way through his window, there could only be one logical reason as to explain how the stone had gotten in here, and that reason was currently standing outside to wait on him.

Hoisting himself up on the windowsill with still more than just a little shaky arms and hands, Brian stood up and carefully peeked through the glass again, having to cling onto the frame when he discovered that his expectation turned out to have been right. In the garden beneath his window, dimly lit by the residue lightning from the lampposts next to the street, was the silhouette of the one person he had been waiting for the entire day. Brian could feel his heart skipping a beat, and he wasn’t sure if the shakiness in his fingers returned as a result of realising that he seriously could have been hurt by the pebble that had been thrown at him, or if it was because the sight of his boyfriend standing there right in the middle of his garden was too much to handle. It seemed surreal, magical, impossible even that Roger was really out there, just a handful of metres away from him, and Brian had to blink multiple times to convince himself it wasn’t just some kind of hallucination or other form in which his mind was playing a joke with him. But it was real, Roger was real, as real as the combination of surprise and guilt visible on his face in the weak glow the streetlight was.

This look on his face probably should have been a forecast for Brian to realise what was going to happen, but he still felt his heart jump when a loud ‘sorry!’ from his boyfriend broke the eternal silence that hung around in their street at night.

 _It’s okay,_ Brian wanted to shout back at him. _It’s okay, I’m fine, I love you, and I love you even more for showing up here after all._ He realised however that yelling at each other to communicate was way too dangerous at the moment, so he stayed quiet and placed a finger across his lips to tell his boyfriend to do the same. Roger clung a hand over his mouth to show him that he had gotten the message, after which Brian could finally flash him a relieved smile. He felt the same as he had done right at the beginning of their relationship (and, to be honest, all their relationship through) when he looked at Roger; there was a storm of butterflies in his stomach and his knees felt week, confirming once again that yes, this really was the person that was worth fighting the entire world for.

Roger waved at him and Brian could not oppress the tendency to send him the kissy hand he previously had prevented himself from making at him out of fear it would be childish. It turned out that Roger thought there was nothing wrong with the gesture Brian associated with little girls in kindergarten more than with men from his own age, because Roger was quick to reciprocate the gesture towards him. Brian allowed himself to smile back at him for a moment, before his mind started wandering off to a problem they were currently facing. Now that Roger had managed to drag himself all the way to his house, they had to overcome the second obstacle, which was trying to get him to enter his room and preferably _without_ permanently wounding him.

Brian picked up the notebook and scribbled down this exact question, before crumbling the paper up into a ball and throwing it at Roger’s direction as much as he could navigate in the current sea of darkness that was surrounding his partner. The paper ended up landing on Roger’s shoulder before falling on the grass below him, where he quickly picked it up and unfolded it. Brian could see Roger struggling to read the message; he had to turn towards the street to catch as much of the light as possible and hold the paper close to his face to read it. He did seem to manage at last, because he put the small note into the pocket of his trousers and pointed at the wall beneath Brian’s window. Brian had no idea what Roger meant with this gesture; he had already thought about having him climb up a drainpipe or something the like, until he had suddenly remembered that the drainpipe was on the side of his parents’ bedroom, which was the last place he wanted his boyfriend to end up in the middle of the night. He shook his head, but Roger continued to point at the wall with renewed urgency, so Brian leaned forwards as much as possible to see what on earth Roger had in mind.

When he looked down at the wall to see for himself what Roger was suggesting, it suddenly all started making sense. It hadn’t been the wall he had been trying to bring his attention to, but the collapsible ladder he had placed against the brick surface that he wanted Brian to look at. Brian had to clasp his hand over his mouth for a moment to prevent himself from laughing; this was so sneaky, so typically Roger, and the whole situation only got better when he realised that they did not have a ladder like this in the garage, nor did any of his neighbours, meaning that the only way Roger could have gotten the aluminium ladder here, was by having taken the thing into the bus and having dragged it around multiple streets of Feltham in the middle of the night.

The both of them shared a broad smile, but when the initial fun of it subsided and the practical side of the story came up, Brian could no longer ignore something he had noticed right from the start: the ladder might make for about two metres when folded out completely (which, he had to admit, was an impressive length for a collapsible tool like this), but there was no way these two metres were going to be enough to bridge the distance between the grass Roger was standing on and his destination in the form of Brian’s window on the second floor. He knew his partner must have realised this, too, when Roger looked around as to find something he could position the ladder on top of to cross the distance. Brian felt his initial hopefulness sinking in when he realised that the garage must have been locked by his father somewhere that evening and that there couldn’t be too much useful in the garden to help Roger out.

Suddenly Roger rushed towards the side of the house as if he had found something that might come in handy for their secret operation. Brian followed his boyfriend closely with his eyes, and he felt his heart skipping a beat when he saw Roger approaching the green garbage can his father used for unwanted plants and weeds when he was gardening, and carefully pulled the bin towards the window by lifting the front side up and placing it on its two wheels, slowly and as soundlessly as possible moving the rectangular bin over the grass and towards the wall.

Seemingly contented with his solution, Roger moved over to the ladder he had brought. Even though Brian had known what he had been planning to do the moment he’d seen his boyfriend moving towards the garbage can, he still felt his heart skip a beat when he saw Roger placing the aluminium item on top of the garbage bin, after which he hoisted himself up the plastic container and folded the ladder out to its maximum length. He placed it against the wall and seemed more than pleased to find that it reached until exactly a few centimetres past Brian’s window, meaning that Brian was therefore able to hold the upright bars of aluminium at the top of the ladder - something Brian was both glad and nervous about doing. Roger positioned the underside of the tool down between a groove in the lid of the container and moved it around for a bit to see if it was stable, and even though it did not seem to be going anywhere, Brian still felt like a _lot_ could go wrong with this improvised construction Roger had just come up with on the fly.

Roger, however, did not seem to doubt his own plans; he wasted no time climbing up the first sports of the stairs, and even though Brian could swear he heard a creaking sound coming from either the ladder or from the garbage can below it, Roger did not seem to care about this at all. Either he was desperate to find himself a spot inside the room and withdraw himself from the eyes of the public, or he was desperate to be with Brian again as soon as possible. And then there was a third option, of course: Roger loved danger, was addicted to it, and what was more pleasing to a daredevil than climbing towards the room of the boy he had a restraining order with through the means of collapsible ladder positioned on top of a garbage bin in the middle of the night?

Deciding that it was most likely to be a combination of all three beforementioned factors that were motivating Roger to move upstairs as quickly as possible, Brian held on to the top of the ladder as if his life - and more importantly, that of Roger - depended on it. He felt sweat breaking out whenever he heard any sort of sound, creak, or otherwise alarming noise. When Roger’s hands got close enough to the window for Brian to touch them, he had to prevent himself from simply grabbing his partner and dragging him inside before anything could go wrong with their improvised construction. However, knowing that all this would do was probably startle Roger, make the ladder fall to the ground, and wake up at least five people around him including his own parents, Brian convince himself that he had to stay calm and simply let Roger do what he turned out to be pretty good at without his interference.

When Roger had managed to squirm through the window and was finally inside his room - together with the ladder he had insisted to take with him out of fear that it might fall to the ground and leave them with a lot of noise and no way for him to escape before somebody would undoubtedly come over to see what on earth was going on - Brian finally allowed himself to take a deep breath after he had pulled the curtain close to make sure no one could spy on them. More than that, he finally allowed himself to stare at his boyfriend with a more than affectionate smile on his face; there he was, his boyfriend, in his room, under all but ideal circumstances and having entered by having needed to climb through the Godforsaken window close to midnight. But all of that was unimportant now - he was here, standing right in front of Brian, flashing an equally loving smile back at him that told Brian that Roger was just as excited about getting to see him again as he was.

They looked at each other for just a moment, as if they were not entirely sure where to start now that there was so much to say, so much to do. There was the whole situation with Brian’s father having made him switch schools, the situation with Brian’s father _himself_ having attacked Roger that afternoon, the both of them not knowing from each other what they had gone through from the moment Roger had left the school premises after their ‘date’ in a school alley around lunchtime on Friday; they did not know what the other had told the police officers, how their family had been reacting to their charges, and how they felt about their arrest themselves. And then, not to forget, there was the trial coming up, the date of which was ‘soon to be announced’ according to the letter Brian had found opened and all (thanks, Mum and Dad) on the kitchen table that morning. They had to talk about what to do with school, what to say in court, how not to contradict each other’s testimonies, and how to go on together if they would be sentenced to prison and not be allowed to be in touch with each other ever again, in the worst case scenario.

Right now, however, none of these deep and philosophical questions mattered. At this instance, with the two of the standing closer to each other than they had been doing ever since their restraining order, there was nothing that mattered apart from each other’s presence.

‘I can’t believe you came,’ Brian was eventually the first one to whisper to his boyfriend with more than just a touch of emotion in his voice. Roger gave him a compassionate glance as if he felt bad for Brian for ever having been in doubt about whether he was going to show up or not, before Brian took a step forward and took Roger’s face between his hands. He pressed their lips together as closely as he could, allowing absolutely nothing, not even the air that they breathed, to stand between Roger and him when he did. Roger was quick to join him by throwing his arms around Brian’s neck and kissing him back just as passionately.

It turned out not to be the soft and cute reunification kiss Brian had been thinking about, but luckily for him, this image he had built up in his mind over the course of the day when secretly fantasising about Roger coming to his room that night, was quickly flying out of the window when he realised that this much more involving kiss was exactly what he had actually been looking for. It was powerful, it was demanding, with lips biting and teeth snapping and their tongues practically clashing together, and it was exactly what both of them seemed to be needing.

When they broke apart eventually, Brian again needed a second to breathe, which allowed Roger to unhook his arms from their previous position around the back of Brian’s neck and place them on Brian’s shoulders as he spoke.

‘Did you think I would leave you hanging here all night long?’ he whispered at him, the sweet sound of his voice being the only reason that managed to make Brian smile while all he actually wanted to do was cry out in pain the moment Roger’s hand came in touch with the sore skin of his left shoulder. He tried to hide the somewhat painful expression he knew for a fact was starting to creep onto his face the longer Roger held his hand on that exact spot on his shoulder by leaning forwards and pulling Roger into a new kiss; this time it was a short, romantic one, the one he had been thinking about all day long, and which sure felt great to be getting after all.

‘Not on purpose,’ Brian started once they had let go of each other again. ‘But when I started thinking about… public transport at night, my parents in the room next to us…’ Brian summed up the exact same problems that Roger had been thinking about also, but then finished his sentence with something that was so typically him: ‘your first class starting at nine next morning…’

Roger couldn’t oppress a bit of a smile when he heard this, and Brian soon realised that he just must have said something incredibly nerdy, something Roger would later undoubtedly refer to as ‘the most Brian-like comment he had ever heard’. That was, if he had forgotten about that time he had asked Roger if he was aware of the presence of alcohol in the glass of vodka he was about to down on one of their first dates to a bar together, which to this date held the dubiously prestigious title of the nerdiest thing the astrophysics student had said to him.

‘As if I care about school in a time like this,’ was luckily all Roger said about his comment, and Brian smiled when he saw an opportunity to join in on the fun.

‘As if you _ever_ care about school.’

‘Touché,’ Roger whispered, leaning over to plant one final kiss on Brian’s lips. When he broke away a bit sooner than with the previous kisses this time, he continued in the same soft voice, forever careful not to wake anyone in the house up: ‘Sorry I kept you hanging, by the way. Buses only travel once and hour at this time, and having to drag a ladder all the way up to your house… took a bit more time than expected.’

 _Oh yeah, the ladder, for the love of God. Speaking of which…_ ‘Where on earth did you find that… _that_?’ Brian said with a nod towards the ladder that was currently occupying most of the surface of his bed now that they had put it down on top of his mattress to avoid the sound of aluminium on his hard wooden floor.

‘My father’s garage. I’ll bring it back before he’ll even notice it’s been gone,’ Roger simultaneously explained and comforted him. Brian was silent for a moment when the image of Roger dragging that ladder through the streets of Feltham was no longer a hilarious sight to him, but turned into an act of love. To know Roger had stolen (or ‘borrowed without asking’, rather, just as he had done with his mother’s foundation) a ladder out of his father’s garage, crammed it inside an evening bus, and dragged it all the way with him to his house just to be with him for what probably wasn’t going to be longer than thirty minutes if they wanted to keep the risk of being discovered as small as possible, really made Brian’s heart melt.

‘I can’t believe you did all of this for me,’ Brian admitted out loud, which once again earned him a compassionate glance from Roger.

‘Brian, is there _anything_ I wouldn’t do for you?’ Roger asked him with a sternness in his voice that Brian wasn’t normally used to, and it made him blush and fiddle with the hem of his shirt to avoid having to look his boyfriend in the eyes when he answered.

‘Normally not, but I thought… After I didn’t even stick up for you against my father, you might have been… Angry at me, a-and didn’t want to see me anymore, for the moment, or for longer than that, and maybe wanted to break up with me, and I was so afraid you weren’t coming over because you didn’t want me anymore because I was being coward and didn’t protect you like I should have,’ Brian turned his entire train of thoughts into one ongoing sentence that seemed to amaze Roger; either because he had never heard so many ‘ands’ and commas in one sentence, or, more likely, because the content of Brian’s monologue was surprising him.

When Brian finally drew to an end in terms of uttering his concerns, Roger, once again sporting that compassionate look on his face, asked him: ‘Baby, do you really think I would blame you for what your father did to me?’

Brian blushed once again; now that he gave himself a second to think about it to seriously consider the likeliness of Roger being mad at him over this reason, or that of Roger being mad at him at all, it indeed seemed like he had been worried about nothing. But even though he knew better than thinking Roger would be mad at him, certainly now that he had gotten Roger’s confirmation that he wasn’t, Brian’s mind was still telling him otherwise.

‘You’d have a right to blame me, surely, when I didn’t do anything to protect you!’ Brian said in a voice he realised a second later might have been a bit too loud for their promise of keeping their voices down. Therefore, in a now softer voice - which was also more fitting for the message he wanted to bring across - the astrophysics student said: ‘I… I should have stuck up for you against my father, I should have done something-’

‘Darling, I told you to go away myself, didn’t I?’ Roger interrupted him with a touch of sternness in his voice, making Brian look up at him. ‘Do you remember when I told you to listen to your father twice?’ he asked, and Brian nodded weakly when it turned out that Roger was not planning on continuing his speech before he had received an answer to his question. ‘I said that because I didn’t want to land you in trouble for my decisions. It was _my_ decision to come over to your house and talk to your father, and the last thing I wanted was to drag you into that,’ he spoke with confidence and determination in his voice, which was probably meant to make Brian feel less guilty, but only seemed to achieved the opposite feeling in him now that he was faced with just how brave Roger had been while he had not even had the courage to stand up for him.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Brian whispered and swallowed heavily to work away the tears that were starting to threaten to wash over him. The image of Roger, with the lower half of his face covered in blood - something he had worked away pretty well by now, Brian had to admit - in combination with the thought of him not having protected him, was enough for him to feel like the worst person on earth.

‘And I’m sorry that you had to see your father and me fighting, and that the first thing I told you when we got to see each other again was that you had to leave. I think we’re even,’ Roger said with the smallest of a smile, but Brian still was too broken about today’s earlier events to join him. Roger seemed to notice this, too, because he took a step closer to Brian and put forward: ‘Come here, you need a hug.’

Before Brian could do even as much as blink, Roger already seemed to have gotten over to him, and the smaller boy stood on his tip toes to throw his arms around him; this time unfortunately not around the back of his neck, but lower, clinging his arms around his shoulders right at the place where a bruise the side of an egg adorned his otherwise pale skin.

Brian fought hard against the searing pain that seemed to set his shoulder on fire, and even though he bit down his lip in an attempt to shut himself up in order not to let Roger notice what was going on, he failed to oppress the squeak of pain that the touch caused him to have to utter. He hoped Roger wouldn’t notice, but he realised himself that it was all too easy to tell he was in pain when he made that sound, twisted his face into a grimace against Roger’s blond hair, and failed to hug him back. Roger was quick to carefully detach himself from his partner’s body, looking at him with a bit of an inquisitive frown.

‘Bri? What was that?’ Roger asked once he had created a distance between the two of them that was big enough for him to see the remains of the painful expression on Brian’s face which the boy hadn’t managed to hide yet - and now that Roger had already seen it, there was not much use in trying to hide it anymore. Still, in an attempt to save both Roger, his father, and himself from even more problems than they already were in, Brian decided to roll with the first excuse that came in mind.

‘Nothing. I just strained a muscle in my shoulder the other day…’ Brian started, but his voice died out when Roger reached out a hand, placed it on the round neck of his partner’s shirt, and pulled the opening towards his shoulder. Brian had to look away when he felt cool air brushing against the damaged skin; he couldn’t look at the proof of just how deeply his relationship with his father had fallen over the course of just a few days.

Roger, on the other hand, seemed to feel no need to look away. Quite the contrary, even; he seemed perfectly focussed on the black and blue patch that interrupted the milky white colour of the skin that surrounded it, studying it with ice cold eyes while continuously chewing on the inside of his cheek. He was silent all the way through, and Brian slowly felt himself growing awkward under Roger’s enduring gaze.

‘I was just lifting up a box…’ Brian started; he felt the need to break the silence with something, _anything_ , as long as it would take his mind off what currently must be going through Roger’s head when faced with the bruise on his shoulder.

Unfortunately for him, Roger did not seem to agree with him, and cut him off mid-sentence. ‘You don’t have to make up excuses. I’m not stupid, I know it was your father,’ Roger ominously confirmed Brian’s fears, and then added: ‘Out of all people, I should be the last one you’d have to lie to about these kind of situations.’ Brian couldn’t quite place the voice he was speaking in; it was either a comfort to let him know he could tell him everything, or a reproach for having tried to make up excuses to his partner, the one he was supposed to be true to at all times and indeed _especially_ in a time like this.

‘I’m sorry,’ Brian apologised softly. ‘I just didn’t want you to worry about me.’

‘Not to worry about you? Babe, I’ve been worried _sick_ about you since the moment I realised they arrested you along with me!’ Roger said in a slightly raised voice, and Brian could see by the desperate look in his eyes that there indeed has been nothing on his partner’s mind than his safety and well-being over the course of the last few days. Brian knew this should not surprise him; after all, Roger also had been on his mind constantly, so it wasn’t weird that the opposite was true for his boyfriend.

‘I’m sorry,’ Brian repeated in an even smaller voice this time, not exactly knowing what he was even sorry about this time around. It was probably for the train of events that had taken placed that day and which had led to Roger having started to worry about him - more than he already had been doing, that was.

‘I’m not mad at you. I’m just mad at your father and the police rest of  the fucking world, but not at you,’ Roger said, which at last was a relief to Brian. Roger took in a deep breath to probably keep his cool, before he ordered in a kind yet somewhat insistent voice: ‘Just tell me what he did to you.’

After all, this question turned out to be some kind of a relief to Brian; not so much because he loved talking about his currently dysfunctional family, but because telling Roger the truth seemed to be a chance for him to make up for having tried to sell him a lie earlier.

‘It was this morning, after you left,’ Brian started shakily. ‘He told me to come downstairs a-and started shouting at me for having come down and telling him to leave you alone, and I… I started yelling at him -  for what might easily be the first time ever,’ Brian added as a detail, ‘that he had no right to hurt you, and then he… threw a glass of water that was standing on the table in the living room against the wall, so I told him he was… _insane_ , and he didn’t blink and slammed me against the wall behind me, and squeezed my shoulder so tightly that it… bruised, I guess,’ Brian said, his voice trailing down when the reality of what had happened started to down on him. His father had always been strict, yes, but Brian could not recall any instance where he had never resorted to violence before these last few days. And as if to make his stomach turn even more than it had been doing already at this realisation, Roger corrected his story slightly with a detail that made Brian feel even more queasy than he had done before.

‘I wasn’t gone yet,’ Roger told him, making Brian close his eyes, because this was a detail he hoped Roger would not have to worry himself with. However, when Roger continued his speech, it seemed like it was already too late to keep his boyfriend in oblivion towards what more his father had done to him that morning. ‘I heard more than just him smashing that glass and throwing you against the wall,’ Roger added softly, seeming to expect Brian to pick up the story where he had left it. Brian was not exactly happy to do so, but trying to keep the remainder of the story a secret to his partner did not seem to be working, so he decided to just tell him the truth.  

‘Then dad dared me to repeat that, so I said he was insane again, and then… And then he hit me a black eye,’ Brian told him softly, which managed to make Roger fall silent for a certain period of time. It was not an uncomfortable silence; just a one in which they both stopped and contemplated how on earth they had fallen into a situation like this, meeting up in secret in a room next to the man who had abused both of them to admit to each other what kind of harm they had been pulled through.

‘He… he _hit_ you…’

Even though there must have been at least a twenty second pause, Roger still seemed too shocked by this answer to even repeat the word Brian had just uttered. Something in his defeated expression told Brian that his partner had feared for this answer or something the like all along, but had been wishing and hoping and praying that Brian would be able to tell him his father had not fallen that low. Brian, however, was afraid he could not tell him such things; in fact, the story was probably even worse than Roger had been preparing for.

‘A black eye. For the second time,’ Brian added softly, wetting his finger with his own saliva and trying to stop his eye from shutting down in pain when he touched the skin beneath it to wipe some of the foundation away and show the bruised skin beneath it. ‘I tried to hide it with my mother’s makeup in order not to worry you even more about me, but you’re right. You’re the last person I have to make excuses to, and the first person to tell what’s been going down here this weekend.’

Roger nodded breathlessly to Brian’s indirect offer to tell him what had been going on between the four walls of their house over the course of the last days, so Brian cleared his throat and told Roger about what had happened when he had been brought back home by the police after his interrogations at the police station, how his mother had been crying and begging him to tell her it all had been a mistake. He tried to control his emotions as much as possible when he found once again that if fucking _hurt_ to have your own parents beg you to deny part of who you were in order for them to love you. When his hands started shaking visibly, Roger carefully moved the ladder aside and guided him over to sit down on the mattress, where he took the spot right next to him, holding both Brian’s hands between his own smaller ones as his partner told him the remaining part of the story. Even Roger seemed to have to look away when Brian told him the story of his father striking him against his left eye so powerfully that it had made him staged back against the wall and black out for a moment on the short term, with the bruise as a long term result, when he had been unable to deny the charges against him.

‘God, Brian…’ Roger sighed when Brian had managed to finish his story after having needed multiple breaks in order not to burst out in tears and possibly wake up the people in the room next to him. ‘I just don’t know that to say to this,’ he mumbled, which was rare for him; Roger was always the one to come up with something to say, and that he currently didn’t manage to think of anything, only went to prove how this story affected him.

‘Perhaps that we’re even now? Both of us having been punched a black eye by my father?’ Brian offered in a quasi-funny attempt to lift the mood that would have seemed to be impossible to lift had he been with any other person than Roger. But, given that he was with the boy he loved most, the one who would never fail to make him feel better when he sensed he needed it, Brian knew that Roger would hook onto this comment and say something that would manage to cheer both of them up to a certain extent - and Roger did not let him down, of course.

‘Not quite. You were punched in the eye twice, I only once. I suggest you punch me so that we don’t have to wake up your father to perform the task and still will come to be even,’ Roger suggested, turning the smallest smile on Brian’s face into a somewhat bigger smile. Now it was Brian’s turn to make the smile return to Roger’s face, and even in the haze of sadness and fear they were currently finding themselves in, he managed to come up with a better plan.

‘I’d rather make up in another area. You’ve kissed me twice this evening, and I’ve only kissed you once so far. So if you’d allow me…’

‘You know you always have permission to my mouth. And the rest of my body, of course…’ Roger added with a saucy wink, and Brian, after having rolled his eyes, quickly shut his partner up by pressing his lips against those of Roger before any more inappropriate comments could escape from them. The kiss was soft this time, soft and careful and involving nothing more than their lips; and when Roger eventually decided to bring up his hand to place it on Brian, he was quick to place it on his side instead of on his shoulder, to prevent accidentally hurting him again.

When they let go of each other after the fourth and for now the last kiss, Brian was the first one to push the thoughts of love and romance out of his mind and turn to a more serious topic.

‘Alright, now that we’re officially even again…’ he said with a weak smile. ‘I hate having to spoil the mood, but I’m afraid we’ve got some things to discuss, concerning the case and the upcoming trial…’

‘You’re right. This is probably going to be our only opportunity, after all,’ Roger agreed, giving in to switching from ‘fun and games’ (as much as you could call their short moment of not focussing about their problems fun and games) to switching himself to talking about some serious issues concerning the upcoming trial that they would soon be called up for. Then again, this current situation seemed to have pulled forward a more mature side of Roger, one Brian had not seen before. Perhaps this was because it had never been necessary before, maybe because Roger’s usual character was way too playful for behaving like an adult, or maybe… because Roger had only just turned eighteen, hardly _was_ an adult, and probably felt like one even less.

Brian glanced at Roger for a moment, at the now serious expression on his otherwise still boyish face; the soft features and the light blue eyes and the smoothness of his face that he barely had to shave yet. It suddenly struck the astrophysics student that Roger had only been seventeen when they had met; still only seventeen when they had fallen in love, and just turned eighteen by the time they had started their relationship. He literally still had been a child when they had met, and the fact that he was five months older and officially an adult by law by now, hardly managed to convince Brian that he was not still a minor. He was still so young, barely out of childhood, and Brian hated himself for pulling Roger through these bitter experiences and forcing him to behave like and adult while all he should have been doing at age eighteen was messing around at school and going out to the movies each weekend, and not secretly breaking in to his boyfriend’s house in the middle of the night to discuss what to say during their upcoming trial that might put both of them in jail. God, even though Brian knew that Roger would never allow him to see the situation like that, he felt guilty for having been the reason that had forced him to grow up faster than anyone his age ever should have to do.

For the exact reason that he already knew Roger would discard his guilt towards having ‘ruined’ his youth, late childhood, adolescence, or whatever one wanted to call these years of the life of an eighteen year old, Brian decided that the best thing he could do to protect Roger now, was to make sure the two of them were exactly on the same page when it came to what they would tell the judges concerning their relationship. He therefore quickly moved on to asking Roger what he had told officer Marks during his interrogation at the police station that Friday and Saturday to get a clear picture of what the both of them had revealed to the authorities and what not.

While explaining each other the details of their testimonies in hushed tones, forever trying to prevent waking up anyone in the house, they came to the conclusion that they had pretty much told the hateful glorified police officer the same things, from the introduction week where they had met to the letters they had written to each other, from the secret meetings at school alleys to their first kiss after a date to the cinema about two and a half months ago. They were relieved to find that neither of them had been going into questions regarding how far they had gone, and certainly that they had made no mention of their first time down at Roger’s student flat just about two weeks ago, which they now unanimously decided not to bring up in later testimonies or interrogations or whatever was going to be planned to get the confessions out of them. They decided to leave more details in the unknown, such as that time Roger had dragged Brian into a bathroom stall at school to make out. Especially Roger having come to Roger’s house for an explanation on why he had switched schools and the consequent fight was something they decided not to talk of, given that Roger having come around Brian’s place could be seen as a breach of contract. It was something Brian knew he would have to talk his parents into (in case they would be called up as witnesses in the process), but if he could convince them it was better for his chances of not getting sentenced to a serious time in prison, he knew they would keep quiet about it. Continuing on the topic of trying to lower their sentence, they agreed on bringing their relationship forwards as a deeply rooted yet platonic love to the court, knowing that the details of their behaviour behind closed doors was probably going to land them into even deeper troubles - or, more concretely, even longer sentences.

Halfway through their conversation, Brian stood up to pick up the notebook and pencil from the desk in order to jot down the plans they were coming up with. Roger turned out to be great at coming up with a structure to make their confessions flow like a proper story in which no one could notice those situations they just decided to leave out, surprising Brian once again by just how well he was handling all the stress.

Fifteen minutes later, when Brian put his pencil down after they had written down an entire plan in twofold so the both of them could ‘practice’ what to say in court, he finally allowed himself to press a kiss against Roger’s cheek, one that Roger was quick to return with the words that ‘it was important to be even at all times’.

Not even a few seconds after this, the church clock from a few streets further down the district chimed a single time, making the both of them realise that it already was one o’clock. Their plan of limiting their time together to half an hour in order to keep the risk of being caught as small as possible had obviously failed. But given that no one seemed to have noticed a thing, they decided that having taken at least twice as long the time as they had initially allowed themselves to be together did not seem to pose a threat to them, and that there was thus no reason to panic. Still, they came to the conclusion that it was probably safest to draw an end to their secret meeting before anything would go wrong if they would push their luck too far.

With strong but careful hands, they managed to place the ladder back between the grove on the lid of the container, and while Brian held onto the aluminium tool, Roger - with the plan they had come up tucked into one of his pockets - skilfully swung a leg over it and climbed outside the room through the hole of the window.

Moving down a few spots so he could comfortable cling onto the iron bars and look at Brian standing at the other side of the still opened window, Roger whispered: ‘It was amazing seeing you again.’

‘I loved seeing you again, too,’ Brian agreed, placing a careful kiss on Roger’s cheek, his lips hardly touching his partner’s skin out of fear that touching him in his current position would make him trip and fall over or so. Roger, on the other side, did not seem to be so afraid of any of this - or perhaps he was looking for danger again, as he was most of the time.

‘Hold on,’ he said as if he was afraid Brian was simply going to run off after this extremely short goodbye, and Brian cocked an eyebrow towards him as indeed to ask him to clarify what he was so anxious about. ‘I’ve always wanted to do a window kiss, with one of us climbing up to the window and the other one inside their room… just like Romeo and Juliet, you see?’ he said, reminding Brian of his own thoughts when Roger had just arrived at his window more than an hour ago.

Even though these thoughts were thus no foreign concept to him, Brian was  a little star struck by the idea. ‘You want to do that… _now_?’

‘No, I was planning to leave, drag this ladder down all the way to Truro, and then return with it tomorrow night purely so we can make out at the window then, alright?’ Roger said with a bit of an eye roll.

 _Touché_ , Brian thought dimly to himself. Still, he found himself not exactly being in favour of the plan; of course, he knew his boyfriend liked all things dangerous, but that was exactly the point - Brian thought it to be too unsafe to have Roger stop focussing on his currently rather unstable position on the ladder and instead divert his attention to him.

‘I wouldn’t want to risk that right now, baby.’

‘But we’re not even right now! You kissed me four times, and I only kissed you thrice,’ Roger reminded him, as if this was a serious reason to take the risk of kissing on top of a collapsible ladder placed on top of a plastic garbage can. To him it probably was, Brian dimly thought to himself while his mind was spinning to come up with a way not to have to take part in such craziness.

‘But you might fall!’ he protested.

‘Then hold me,’ Roger told his afraid looking boyfriend, after which he placed his arms around Brian’s neck, immediately making Brian jump in to secure his own hands around Roger’s back. With the distance between them closed in to a minimum by this act, Roger leant forwards to press their lips together for what Brian realised was going to be the last kiss in probably quite a while. With this thought lingering to the back of his mind, he decided to put his worries aside and _live_ , simply _live_ for a moment - and not just for _a_ moment, but for _the_ moment, _this_ moment shared between him and the person he loved most and who he would not give up for the world, no matter what anyone said, thought, decided, or judged.

‘I love you,’ Brian whispered against Roger’s lips when he pulled away eventually, hearing the younger boy reciprocating this answer against his cheek when he brushed his nose against it softly as he moved away from him.

They stood looking at each other for a moment, before Brian was the one to eventually put an end to their adventures of that night. ‘Go now,’ he urged softly with pain in his heart, trying to find a reason that would make Roger leave without making it hurt as much as just telling him to go home would do, and luckily coming up with something. ‘You’ve got class tomorrow at nine. Don’t think I forgot about that, young man,’ Brian snickered, watching Roger roll his eyes.

‘Yes, dad,’ he agreed begrudgingly as he prepared for his way downstairs, but suddenly seemed to think better of it. ‘Oh, and Brian?’ he said, stopping just when he seemed to be about to leave.

‘Yes?’ Brian replied.

‘If you find a part of your garden path missing…’ Roger dug into the pocket of his jeans, and just as Brian wanted to tell him to hold on to the bars of the ladder for the love of God, his partner pulled out a couple of small cobblestones that he placed on the windowsill before him. ‘I totally didn’t tear them out at all,’ he chuckled.

Brian was luckily able to snicker along with him. ‘I’ll put them back as soon as I’ll be allowed to leave the house to pick up the post again or something like it.’

‘Great plan,’ Roger told him. ‘And remember - nothing ever happened this night; you were in your room, I was at my apartment, and we never were in touch, neither now nor anywhere during our restraining order.’

Brian nodded as a sign that he understood and agreed with his partner’s words, but as he saw Roger descending the ladder and slowly vanishing into the darkness below, he found himself wishing things were different. He wished they could have been open about their relationship, could have told and shown people around them how dedicated they were to each other, could have boasted about this secret meeting as a great way of undermining their parent’s authority to their friends during a night at the pub like normal adolescents would be able to do. But Brian knew that was not going to be realistic for them, not now in any case, and that all he could do was hope that once day he’d be able to look back at this sneaky meeting in the middle of the night as something to feel proud and confident about, and no longer would have to hide this night’s events as if his life depended on it. To complete the twisted feeling of sadness and hopelessness he was experiencing now that he saw Roger folding up the ladder, bringing the garbage can back to its original place, and left their garden along the cobblestone path he had pulled out some stones that earlier that night, Brian realised that if they did not keep today’s meeting - which they viewed as a blessing they both had been longing for but which authorities would view as a breach of their restraining order at the very least - a top secret from the rest of the world, it could indeed influence and bring down their fate to an even deeper pit than it already had been.

Once again without undressing, Brian lay down on his mattress, burying his head against the book about ancient Egyptian societies and thinking over all that had been said and done between his boyfriend and him before he felt the numbness of his brain pulling him into unconsciousness.


	6. Chapter 6

‘Mister May? Mister May, are you paying attention?’

Brian hardly looked up from the hands he had folded into his lap, in which he at the moment was finding more interest in than in paying attention to the man in front of him who had just called his name to check if he was still mentally present. He knew it was important to listen to the man his parents had hired to defend him in court, but he simply could not get himself to face him, let alone actually pay attention to him. There was so much running through Brian’s mind right now, but the joint attempt of his parents and the lawyer to figure out what to say and do in court, was not part of his current stream of thoughts. There was no room for these three people trying to do what they probably thought was best for him but which Brian considered to be toxic towards his relationship with Roger, the one they were trying to erase to the point where it was going to look like nothing but a mistake, an accident, and _incident_ even that had taken place without either of them ever having meant any of it. And even though Brian realised that playing their love down as much as possible was the only thing that could safe whatever was left to safe, it still felt so wrong and unfair, and he therefore could not feel anything but anger towards the three people sitting around him.

‘Brian,’ his father grumbled, obviously more than a little displeased with his son’s absent-mindedness. ‘Listen to mister Green.’

Brian looked up and let his glance on his father’s face, which he could read like an open book. The usual anger and disgust was visible on it, this time mixed with impatience and something that seemed like misunderstanding, probably towards the fact that Brian was not grasping this opportunity to talk to this lawyer and come up with a plan to save himself from detention. Brian knew his father probably had be hoping for him to open up to this stranger and let him handle his fate in court, but his dad of course didn’t know that Roger and he had already come up with a plan of their own during their secret meeting, and that Brian did not feel like he needed the help of this intruder who had been called into his life by his parents and whose main aim so far seemed to be to make all of them pretend that nothing had ever happened between Roger and him. Brian knew that his father would never understand his aversion towards the man for the reason mentioned above, and that he similarly would never understand why Brian wasn’t seizing the chance he had given him. Then again, Brian knew that none of this whole show was actually about him; it was all to save him from blame so that his father’s reputation could remain as spotless as it always had been.

 _Spotless to the outside world while the shirt stained with blood from Roger’s bleeding nose was hidden away somewhere at the bottom of the laundry basket,_ Brian thought bitterly.

‘Will you listen, please?’ his mother’s fragile voice caught his ears, and Brian decided that it was probably better to give some kind of a reply in order not to make her break down and cry right here in the middle of the room. The possibility of this happening within now and five minutes anyway was realistic, but at least for now Brian managed to prevent it.

‘I am listening,’ Brian mumbled, his fingers fiddling with the tie with world’s ugliest print. His father had given it to him and made him wear it to this appointment in order to make him look ‘serious and professional’. As if Brian cared about looking serious and professional in a time like this.

‘Very well,’ mister Green instantly added, probably afraid the family would break out into fighting if he did not take over the lead of the conversation as fast as he could. ‘If everyone is with me, I’d suggest that now that we’ve discussed the testimony Mister May gave in the police station on Friday 11 November 1967, to interrogator Joseph Marks,’ - Brian had to oppress the tendency to vomit whenever he heard this name, even though he had already heard it a _lot_ over the course of the last thirty minutes - ‘and recording officer Peter McAllen, let’s move on to what happened after you returned from the police station.’ Mister Green’s voice was a business-like tone Brian knew the man was probably used to after God knows how many years of having come across cases like his one, but he still felt like it was completely out of place for the current topic. There were feelings involved in this case, Goddamnit, _feelings_ from both his side and from Roger’s side, and he wasn’t going to let this random law clerk his parents had pulled out from God-knows-where erase all of those just so he could make money on a hopefully successful defence in court.

There was silence for a short while as the lawyer put on his glasses and scanned the notebook and legal documents lying in front of him on the table with the help of a pen that left a faint trail on the paper when it moved down. ‘Have the two of you strictly lived up to the restraining order you have been given by the court?’ the man eventually asked.

 _We have_ , Brian wanted to say. Of course he was not going to bring up that one night Roger had shown up at his window, which by now was already over a week ago. He had not managed to be in touch with Roger since, and he could only wonder what was going on in his boyfriend’s life right now. He wondered if Roger was in the same position as he was; if his parents would also have dragged him over to a law firm and made him sit down to talk to a lifeless law clerk such as the one sitting across from Brian by now. He wondered if Roger had returned to school like he said he would the day after their midnight meeting - a term he found himself using when inwardly referring to the last time he had seen Roger - and if he slept just as poorly as he did. He wondered if Roger had already read the letter sent to them the day before, and if, he wondered what had been going through Roger’s head when he read that their case would be brought before the judge in a matter of less than two weeks-

‘My son stuck to the court order perfectly,’ Harold answered on Brian’s behalf when the client himself had sunken into his own mind at the realisation that he had no idea how Roger had been doing since their last moment of forbidden contact. ‘But the other one…’ he said, as if speaking Roger’s name would leave too bad of a taste on his tongue for him to pronounce out loud. ‘He showed up at our house one day.’

‘With the other one you mean mister Taylor, I’m assuming?’ mister Green asked, not looking up from the notepad on which he scribbled down this new information.

‘Exactly, that’s the one I mean,’ Harold gritted in reply.

‘And when did this incident take place?’ mister Green asked, and Brian had to oppress the tendency to roll his eyes. Everything discussed in this room concerning their relationship was being referred to as an incident, as if nothing had happened on purpose as the result of the deliberate actions of two adults who could decide for themselves what they wanted to do with their lives. He knew they had to play everything down once they were in court, but for the love of God, he hated the fact that these people around him were sweeping their relationship under the carpet because they obviously one by one did not believe in their love for each other, and that was putting it softly.

‘Last week on Monday,’ his mother answered, and the three of them watched as the lawyer carefully noted this information down.

‘So what happened when he showed up? I suppose he knocked or rang the doorbell, one of you opened the door… and then?’ mister Green asked, and Harold was of course the first to reply.

‘He said he wanted to talk to me. I politely told him to go, and when he refused after I had asked him a handful of times, I shut the door in his face.’

Brian shot his father the coldest glance he could manage; the lies, the pure _lies_ he was coming up with and spitting out at whoever wanted to hear it in order to save his own reputation, were unbelievable. He wondered where his father had acquired the talent of coming up with lies on the fly, and if he was proud of himself for it; and if he could sleep at night thinking back at all the nonsense he had told people, but he already knew the answer. During these last two weeks, his father had shown an unscrupulous side of himself that Brian had never seen before. All he once thought he had known about the man he used to idolise, seemed to have flown out of the window. All he knew about his father now was that he felt _ashamed_ to be his son.

‘Are there any witnesses for this?’ mister Green asked, once again without looking up from the paragraph in his notebook that he was working on.

‘I was there,’ his mother confirmed softly, and Brian didn’t even bother looking at her the way he had done to his father. He was unsure whether she was lying in order to save herself from troubles with her husband, or if she simply didn’t have the courage to speak for herself like usual - but what Brian did know, is that he had never felt so betrayed by the pair of people who called themselves his parents. At this instance, Brian wished his parents were strangers that he had caught in the act of lying, so he could chew them out for it and walk away to never see them or think about them again.

‘And where was Brian this moment?’ Brian awoke from his hateful thoughts towards his parents when he heard his own name being called, but he found out soon after that it was not necessary for him to answer, given that his father had already stepped up to do it.

‘In his room. He did come downstairs when he heard me telling someone to leave, but the two of them have not been in touch,’ Harold said determinedly.

‘So mister Taylor did not seem to have come to talk to your son, but only to you?’ Mister Green looked up at his interlocutor as if this was not quite a credible statement. It was funny, really, because this was the only thing his father had been claiming that actually had been true. Roger had indeed come out to give Harold his honest opinion on having pulled his son out of school, and had even told Brian to leave when he showed up (to protect Brian from seeing his father beating him up and not so much to prevent them from breaking the restraining order, that was, but Brian deemed this motif to be irrelevant for the turnout of the situation). The point of it was that Roger had not come to talk to him.

 _Not during the day in any case,_ Brian thought with a smug smile that he quickly hid again.

‘He had heard Brian switched to another university and wanted to know why this was,’ Harold said.

‘Then why would he want to talk to you, instead of your son?’ the lawyer asked, and while Harold seemed to need a second to find a way to twist the situation into a way where he did not have to confess he had been the one to pull his son out of university, Brian seized this chance to tell mister Green the truth concerning his switch of schools.

‘Because _I_ didn’t switch, he was the one to pull me-’

Just when Brian was mid-sentence, he felt something lashing out at his leg, followed by a short but explosive pain against his right shin. It only took him half a second to realise that it had been his father, who, sitting straight across from him, had been in a perfect position to kick him against the shin with a force powerful enough to make him shut up. Minster Green, obviously not noticing - or choosing not to notice - this sudden breakdown of his client’s sentence, simply asked: ‘Will Mister Taylor be able to tell the exact same account of this story?’

‘I would hope so. This is how things went,’ Harold ensured, making Brian feel sick to the stomach for what certainly was not the first time that day.

‘Do we know if mister Taylor will tell his lawyer the same story? I think I should be in touch with his lawyer about this incident,’ mister Green said as he turned to Brian for the first time in minutes when asking a question about him and his partner - or co-suspect, as they seemed to prefer to call him. Brian could only just manage to pull his face into neutrality again after just having made a grimace when the word ‘incident’ had fallen once again.

‘Who’s his lawyer, dear?’ his mother asked him. Hearing her call him ‘dear’ seemed to foreign to Brian. She used to do it all the time, but since his arrest, he could not recall a single instance in which she had called him ‘dear’ or ‘darling’ or something similarly endearing. That she was using it right now was nothing more than an attempt to look civilised and supporting in the eyes of the outsider amidst them; Brian knew that the moment they would be between the three of them again, she was resort to the crying and the distant quietness she had been treating him with the last few weeks.

Brian forced himself to think about the question he had been asked, but came to the conclusion he could not logically know who Roger’s lawyer was. _How the fuck was he supposed to know when they were not allowed to be in touch with each other?_ ‘I don’t know. I’m not allowed to be in touch with him, after all,’ Brian said only a little bitterly, which his parents either didn’t notice or choose to ignore it now that they had gotten their answer - be it an undesirable one - and turned their attention to the lawyer again.

‘I would like to be in touch with him, so I’ll try if I can find his lawyer,’ mister Green said while making a note about this on his to-do-list. ‘That way we can…’

‘But we didn’t speak to each other,’ Brian interrupted the man.

‘Listen,’ the man said to him as he leant forwards to Brian for a bit, making Brian unsure if he was cutting him off as revenge for him having done the same to him mere seconds before, or if he was about to share something important and confidential with him that could not wait any longer. ‘I can discuss this situation with his lawyer, make a little story around it, or leave the entire meeting out. That could be good for your chances in court,’ mister Green said with somewhat of a sparkle of enthusiasm in his eyes, probably already imagining his pay check if he handled this case well.

Harold, on the other hand, did not seem to excited about leaving out the instance of Roger showing up at their house; most likely because this would of course rob him of a chance to get Roger a more serious sentence, something that seemed to be his main goal these days. ‘But Roger did come out to _my_ house to bother me and my family while he had a restraining ord-’

‘Mister May,’ the lawyer said before he could finish his sentence, and Brian found himself loving it to see his father being the one to be interrupted for once. ‘I’ve been in this business for over twenty years by now, and I know that a breach of restraining order is deemed to be a serious offence. They will find a way to blame both Roger and Brian for it, even if only one person caused the breach. I can assure you that it’s better for all parties engaged, including your son, to play down what happened.’

‘Alright then. I trust your word on that,’ Harold gave in, even though he did not seem entirely convinced - or maybe he was convinced, but was the bigger problem that he wasn’t satisfied with the solution offered by the lawyer because he didn’t get to hurt Roger this way.

‘Great. I will find out whether he has a lawyer or not, and if, where to find him and speak to him as soon as possible,’ mister Green said, finishing his sentence on the notepad beneath him with a nearly theatrical gesture of dotting the i’s on the paper.

‘Is it likely that he has taken to a lawyer?’ Ruth confirmed that she was still present in the room that was otherwise dominated by the voices of men.

‘I would certainly hope so, given the severity of the charge,’ mister Green told her. ‘And since I’m not allowed to be in touch with him directly at the order of the judge - who wants two separate testimonies from both suspects - the only way I can make sure Brian and Roger will bring out the same story, is by talking to the lawyer of the other party.’

‘He better makes sure he finds himself a decent lawyer,’ Harold gritted. ‘If he _dares_ ruining my son’s chances of acquittance by not dragging his ass over to a law firm and find himself someone to defend him in court…’ Brian swallowed somewhat painfully; he had already given up his hope in an outcome of acquittance for either Roger or for himself, given the charges and the evidence against them. Right now however did not seem like the right moment to tell his father that, and even mister Green seemed to sense that he’d better wait before he’d rob his touchy client of this unrealistic fantasy. The man quickly flicked to a clean page in his notebook and started off at a new topic.

‘Good, so that was the incident of Roger showing up at your house, which I’m sure of we’ll find a way around,’ he said with a bit of a smile that told Brian that this guy was used to sweeping inculpatory information under the carpet. ‘What I would like to talk about now, is how we’re going to present the events between mister May and mister Taylor to the judge.’

‘What does that mean?’ his mother asked, but Brian already had a feeling he knew where this was heading, and he was not pleased with it at the very least.

‘It means we’re gonna strip my whole relationship with Roger bare and make it look like we accidentally fell into each other’s arms and kissed each other when someone happened to walk by to take a picture of it and turn us in to the police,’ Brian told her coldly while staring at the lawyer.

‘Brian!’ his mother hissed at him as if she could not believe the son she tried to raise as decently as possible had turned against her by acting provocatively towards a lawyer.

‘Am I right or am I wrong, though?’ Brian added.

‘Will you stop this nonsense at once?!’ his father thundered through the room, which made Brian throw up his hands as to wordlessly give in and let the lawyer go back to what he was supposed to be good at - coming up with a way not to land him in jail for maximum of two years’ time. However, Brian had to admit that at the moment, being away from this society and especially from his parents, did not sound so bad after all.

Mister Green took the silence to pick up his monologue again - as far as one could call it a ‘monologue’ if the speaker was being interrupted twice a sentence. ‘What I meant is that we need to discuss the vibe of the contact. We don’t want the judge to think that you two actually were in love-‘

‘ _Are_ in love,’ Brian corrected him. He was sure that the only reason his parents didn’t lash out at him was because the lawyer immediately picked up his sentence where he had been cut off, and they didn’t want to interrupt him twice within the time span of five seconds.

‘…And being physically close and all that,’ he said with a bit of a vague gesture of his hand as if he did not prefer to name or even think about what this would include. ‘Instead, we want to make them believe it was simply-’

‘An incident, perhaps?’ Brian suggested, receiving dirty looks from everyone apart from Green, who seemed too caught up in his own plans to even notice this throwback at his own use of language.

‘So what would you suggest, mister Green?’ his mother said to quickly direct the attention back to the man (supposed to be) in charge of the situation. She was obviously hopeful and confident that he had the answers to bail out her son, and, probably more importantly, her family’s reputation.

‘I suggest we make it look like a friendship gone a bit overboard without either of the two ever having intended for it to come this far. We’re going to make it appear to the judges that Brian, a boy so busy studying that he never had too much time to make friends, got hooked on Roger during the introduction week he had signed up for to help as a group leader, and that Roger, being new to the university environment, was all too happy to accept his help.’

 _You’ve got to be kidding,_ was Brian’s first thought when he heard this plan for multiple reasons. The first of these was that he wondered how the man came up with the idea of making it appear that he was isolated from other people his age due to him eternal study sessions; either it had been a disturbingly accurate guess, or it was something his parents had told Green in the previous contact with him. Especially this last option seemed like a credible one to Brian, given that he also could not remember ever having said something about the introduction week he had been volunteering at. This left his parents as the only source that could have informed the lawyer about this detail, and quite possibly also about his somewhat (and not always voluntarily) reclusive lifestyle. And finally, he was more than displeased with the idea of simply pretending nothing serious had ever happened between Roger and him; he loved him, fucking _loved_ him with all of his heart, and the thought of erasing all that had happened just to please some people higher up with the authority to decide who got to love in peace and freedom and who had to be locked away for their feelings, was too much for Brian to agree to.

Not so much to his surprise, his parents were a lot more positive towards the proposal than he was. ‘Sounds good,’ was the comment of his father, who gave a nod in agreement as he looked at his wife.

‘Are you sure it’ll work? That they’ll believe it?’ his mother asked carefully, as if she did not want to make it appear like she was doubting the authority of someone who studied law, but at the same time was apprehensive about a plan that lay miles away from the events as they had happened.

‘A similar plan worked out perfectly in a case I had about a year ago,’ mister Green told her, although he did not seem to want to disclose what sentence ‘worked out perfectly’ had eventually led to for his clients. ‘Look, this way we won’t be lying about what happens, given that lying under oath is punishable, but we’ll still manage to make things look… less severe than they actually were,’ he said, which mainly Brian’s mother seemed to appreciate greatly.

‘Let’s make it something like this,’ mister Green started as he pulled out the notebook, and Brian found everyone but himself hanging half over the table to find out which plan he was going to sketch down this time. ‘Brian is young, insecure, perhaps a bit lonely and certainly inexperienced in love and relationships…’ he started drawing out, making Brian pull up one eyebrow to the somewhat offensive description of him. ‘It are these kind of adolescents that feel a strong need to find out who they are and what they want from other people in life, even more than normal people his age.’

 _Thanks for displaying all young people discovering their sexuality as a bunch of brainless creatures walking around without any kind of self-determination or personality,_ Brian found himself mumbling. Before too long, however, the lawyer went on with his rambling as if he possessed some serious knowledge about the nature and psychology of homosexual adolescents. Brian highly doubted that the man knew anything about said topic in his position of a straight male in his forties who was probably married - to a woman, needless to say - judging by the ring on his finger. What he continued to say afterwards, only proved to an ever more annoyed growing Brian that he indeed had no idea what he was talking about.

‘So what do you do then? You start experimenting. Normal adolescents would do alcohol or drugs or skip school or sneak out of the house to go out late at night, but ones like Brian engage in untraditional relationships to find out where the boundaries lie,’ mister Green said, jotting down the worlds ‘alcohol’,  ‘drugs’, ‘skipping school’, ‘partying’, and, inevitably, the ‘homosexual experimenting’ Brian had almost been waiting for to appear on yet another piece of paper. ‘That just happens when you’re young; sometimes crossing a line you didn’t mean to. It’s all logical, right - being young, making mistakes, learning from it and moving on. We’ve all done things in our youth that we’ve come to regret later, haven’t we?’

Brian was not sure if the man sitting diagonally across from him was simply coming up with a court strategy, or if he was stating his personal beliefs on homosexuality - but, given the conviction he spoke with, Brian assumed that it was the latter of both options. He had sensed this distance and ill-hidden mistrust towards gay people in the lawyer’s voice before, but this time was different, in the sense that Brian could no longer keep quiet and endure the hate around him anymore.

‘Okay, that’s it. I’ve _had_ it with this bullshit plan and I’m _not_ participating in it!’ Brian spat out all of the sudden, making all the people sitting around the table look up at him in shock. Mister Green even let his pen slip out of his fingers, ironically causing an ink stain to form right over the words ‘being young and making mistakes’, making part of the letters illegible.

‘Brian, what on earth..!’ His father seemed too shocked - or too mad - by his son’s unexpected burst of anger to start shouting right away, but Brian knew that this was soon to come. For now, he might as well take advance of the rare silence his father was leaving him with before he would undeniably break loose towards him.

‘You know damn well what’s going on!’ Brian found himself screaming at his father, something he never would have imagined himself doing before these two weeks, but which by now seemed to be something inevitable that simply had to happen at some point in time with the tension running high between the two of them. That this ‘some point’ happened to turn out to be right here in the presence of his mother and the lawyer was unfortunate, but not a main concern of his. ‘I won’t let you call Roger a mistake I made and I won’t ever regret being with him, whether you like it or not!’ Brian shouted at him, but unfortunately, his father was ready to fight back this time.

‘Shut up!’ his father yelled back at him in a voice loud enough for probably the people down the hallway to hear. ‘Do you realise that I’ve telephoned seven law firms before I was able to find one Goddamn lawyer who was willing to save you out of the mess you made?! Seven companies! That’s how bad your crimes are - you should be thanking mister Green on your bare _knees_ for even _wanting_ to help you!’ his father demanded in a voice even louder than Brian had heard over the last two weeks, but even this was not enough to make Brian behave and shut up like he had been told - not now that he was determined not to let his father run over him any longer.

‘On my bare knees. Nice reference to my ‘homosexual behaviour, dad,’ Brian teased, seeing the colour of his father’s face growing from light red to deep crimson in anger. He expected him to snap at him, to yell and scream and to perhaps even throw one of the glasses of water on the table be for them across the room. Nothing like this happened, though; his father surprised him with an act that Brian had not seen yet. Before he could even blink his eyes, his father had already stood up with such a speed that it made the chair he had been sitting on tip over and clatter against the wooden floor below. But this was not enough to Harold, of course; he always needed to cause a scene, show his self-presumed authority, and make sure he always had the last word. He now displayed this by reaching over the table, grabbing onto Brian’s tie, and pulling at it strongly enough to force Brian up from his chair and over to the table, where he could no longer pretend like his father did not exist, but was forced to face him as closely as he had been doing in quite a while.

 _So this is why he made me wear this gross tie,_ Brian found himself thinking for a fraction of a second, before his father’s furious voice absorbed all of his attention.

‘That’s the limit! You sit your ass down and do whatever mister Green tells you to do without one more word, or I’ll make sure you won’t be able to say anything anymore for the rest of the session! Your mother and me are paying twelve pound an hour for this to help you and I won’t allow you to screw it up!’ his father threatened, and Brian had to take in a deep breath. His father’s angry face was at a distance of no more than thirty centimetres from his, and he had to oppress the tendency to spit into his father’s face. He wanted to scream and shout back at him, roughly pull away, strike his father across the face, but he knew that this would only result in an eye too surrounded by bruises to be covered up with foundation by the time they would get home again. It was probably better to give him an ice cold reply, than trying to fight fire with fire.

‘You’re not doing this to help me,’ Brian said in hushed tones to his father, only just loud enough for the people around him to hear him. ‘You wouldn’t mind if I would rot away in a police cell for the rest of my life. You’re doing this to help your own-’

‘Shut up and sit down,’ his father interrupted him in a voice still loud enough for people outside the office of mister Green - who by now looked a bit pale as the result of the feud between father and son that he was forced to witness from his chair - to hear it.

‘Your own reputation,’ Brian finished his sentence imperturbably. ‘And mind you, you were the one to pull me out of my chair,’ he added, which perhaps might have been a bit too much. Brian knew he would be getting _hell_ for his behaviour once they would be between the three of them again, but that was not something he could get himself to worry or even care about right now. All that was on his mind now was protecting his right to call Roger his partner, the one he loved, and to not have to deny their entire legacy together in order to probably be sentenced to jail for twenty months instead of two years, something Brian hardly thought was worth trying.

‘Sit down, _now_!’ his father yelled at him one more time, giving him a push against the chest to press him back in the chair he just had pulled him out of. Brian, relieved he had been let go of, refashioned his tie, flashed his father one more look of disgust (and received something similar but worse back from him), before he finally obeyed to the order of being quiet.

‘Good, then...’ mister Green said, obviously still shocked and a bit surprised by the sudden fight and even more sudden end to it. ‘Even though the opinions are clearly… _divided_ on this topic, I’d still suggest that the best way to get us through the testimonies and interviews in court by making it all appear to have been a friendship run out of hand and something that both Brian and Roger both regret and wish never to let something like this happen again. Agreed?’

‘Let’s do so,’ Brian’s father grumbled, his mother nodded, and when mister Green immediately moved on to his next sentence, it was clear to Brian that they didn’t even need his approval for anything. No one was going to listen to him as long as he was not parroting their opinions on how to handle the matter, and he decided that fighting these kind of people - the police officers, the interrogator, his parents, this lawyer - was going to be useless. He had better things to direct his attention to, such as the only person he was sure would always listen to him and value his opinion. So even though Roger was nowhere near the law firm he had been dragged into by his parents for what seemed to be the rest of the afternoon, Brian simply let ‘the adults’ make the plans, leant back in his chair, stared out of the window, and thought about Roger as a silent protest towards the people surrounding him that made him and everything he had ever done feel like a mistake.

# # #

Brian had found out quickly enough about the news of their case being brought to court in only a matter of two weeks and immediately had run off to a lawyer (or well, technically it had been his parents’ idea), but Roger was still not-so-blissfully unaware of this new threat hanging above their heads. While Brian found himself tangled up in piles of legal documents, his parents’ lies, the lawyer’s made-up relationship proposal for the court which would strip Roger and his story off all romance and truth, Roger found himself slowly waking up in the middle of a tangle of bedlinen in his apartment at the other side of London. He shook his messy hair out of his face and rubbed his eyes, groaning when he immediately felt a headache welling up. He had suffered from them a lot over the course of the last two weeks, but they had never gotten as bad as to the point where he already felt a searing pain at the front of his head before he had even opened his eyes.

Speaking of opening his eyes… Had it been up to him, Roger would have preferred not to engage in this activity at all, and simply keep his eyelids shut, turn around in his mess of sheets and blankets and pillows, and trying to catch up some of the sleep he had missed out on during the night. The stress of the situation, the case, the charges, not knowing how Brian was dealing with all of it, was affecting him not only in the form of growing headaches, but also in that of not being able to sleep during the night. All he ever seemed to be able to do at night was think about what would happen to Brian and him - mainly to Brian, who, after all, remained his main concern. He had not managed to be in touch with Brian again after his secret nightly visit to his boyfriend’s room, and he was worried sick about him, knowing he was living with an abusive freak like his father. Brian had assured him his father wasn’t usually violent towards him or anyone else, but out of the seemingly innocent things Brian had disclosed about his father’s behaviour during the months they had been dating, Roger had already discovered that there was something persistently aggressive about the man. It was passive aggression most of the time, surely, simply demanding obedience and peace and quiet when he asked for it. But the revelation of Brian’s father having pushed Brian against the wall, punched him in the eye, in combination with Roger’s own rather violent meeting with Harold, told him enough about what kind of man his partner’s father was. This, in turn, made him wonder how on earth Brian could _live_ in his presence - and how Harold could live with _himself_ , treating his son like that.

A ray of sunlight made its way through the curtains and into his face, and Roger grumbled softly in response. Judging by the intensity of the light - certainly given that the end of November was near - it could impossibly be anywhere before eleven o’clock, meaning that he once again had wasted an entire morning in bed. Not that he had anything else to do besides lying in bed, or on the sofa, or at whatever other convenient place he could find around the house - but he knew himself well enough to know that he would only feel worse than he already did if he was to spend all day in bed, so he urged himself to get up.

Begrudgingly, Roger opened his eyes to find that the clock across his room displayed the time of twenty past eleven. He stepped out bed, feeling all his joints and muscles protest when he swung his legs over the edge of the mattress and sat upright. The suddenness with which he operated made it feel like someone was stabbing a knife through the sides of his head, but he had gotten used to the stinging pain of headaches after these two weeks, so he simply ignored the searing pain and stood up. He staggered towards the closet for a set of clean clothes - he had fallen asleep without undressing, in the clothes which he had been wearing for days at last. He opened his closet to find that there was not much decent clothing left for him to wear. But then again, he wasn’t going anywhere anyway, wasn’t going to be seeing anyone, so he simply settled with the first plain black shirt and torn and faded jeans he laid his hands on when he blindly worked his way through his closet with the help of his fingertips. He discarded his old shirt and trousers on the floor, could once again not care to pick them up so simply shoved them under the bed with his left foot like he had been doing for the past two weeks, and slipped into his new garments. Still wiping the sleep out of his eyes, he walked over to the kitchen of the apartment through the narrow hallway, where he ignored the letters on the doormat that were starting to pile up now that he hadn’t even looked at them for easily a week.

Once arrived in the kitchen, Roger opened the fridge and scratched his head when he found it to be emptier than what he was used to. There did not seem to be any milk or yoghurt or anything like it that he would usually have for breakfast, but he soon after remembered the cause of this. Normally, he would sneakily steal some of the dairy products and cereals his flatmate would buy, but the boy - or his family, rather - had suspended his rental contract when they had found out about the charges against Roger, and had urged him to move into a room they had found a few streets away. Even though he and his flatmate had not been amazingly close, Roger still felt sad about his department (ejection, more like), and particularly because of the reason he had left. During their final conversation after Roger had woken up from the sound of movement of heavy furniture in the bedroom across from him to find that his roommate’s family was helping him move, he had learned that the boy did not agree with it himself and was even on Roger’s side in the whole juridical matter. But once again, it seemed like his side was fighting a losing battle; love was overpowered by hate, fear, and prejudice, and there was nothing Roger could do but look on while his roommate’s family took both half the furniture and the only person that kept him from complete social isolation away.

 _Nevermind. I wasn’t hungry anyway,_ Roger thought to himself while pushing the door of the empty fridge close and sit down at the kitchen table. Just after he had done this, the sound of mail falling through the door mailbox and landing on the pile already lying below it was loud enough to make him turn around and look into the hallway, where he now indeed found an even higher stack of mail in front of the door. _Even if I wished to leave this place and go outside for whatever reason, I couldn’t, simply for the obstacle on the way to the door,_ Roger thought to himself with a bit of a smile that vanished as soon as he thought of what might be found in that stack of mail - because Lord, there was a reason why he had been neglecting his mail for at least a week. That reason had started when after having returned from school on both the first and the last day he had gone after their arrest, he had been met with a hate letter on his doormat. He still remembered how his hands had shaken while he had read the letter about what a dirty fag he was, how Brian and he deserved to be kicked out of school and put in jail for as long as possible, and never to return to the ‘civilised society’ again.

It had been an enormous shock to Roger - not only the fact that someone had taken the time to write and post a hate letter to his house, but also the fact that they knew where he lived. He later realised that this should not have come as a shock to him. Since the first day of the introduction week, he had been the one to show up at every party, or to host them himself at his apartment if there was nothing to do for the weekend. People had been to this place, they knew his address, his phone number, and they were going to use it against him now that they could. Because it were not just the letters that had been arriving continually; he had also received telephone calls from unknown telephone numbers to the point where Roger eventually had decided to pull the cable out of the device last week to stop the endless ringing that reminded him of just how much people seemed to hate him right now. This, in turn, seemed to have moved people to show up at his house; for a short period of a few days, people had been ringing the doorbell and hitting against the door in an attempt to probably lure him outside. He of course had never even considered opening the door a single millimetre, but then people had decided that they didn’t even _need_ him to open the door for them. People _still_ had been around his place to this very day; after all, as far as Roger was concerned, half a dozen of eggs did not randomly ‘fall’ against the window of his third floor apartment out of nowhere during the night.

Now that he didn’t pick up the phone or open the door for anyone, haters probably thought that writing him painful letters was the only way to hurt him, so that’s what they had obviously continued doing. There had been two, maybe three anonymous letters of people telling him they supported him and wished him well, but for the rest of it, solely letters informing him about Brian’s and his charges and more hate letters had arrived, until hate letters had turned into threats. Threats to molest his apartment, or to wait on him in front of his flat to beat him up once he would walk outside. And as if all of this hadn’t been enough, eventually, a death threat had showed up between his post. It had been about one week ago when he had opened a letter that had said nothing more than _‘know that you’re a dead man walking’,_ written in a red substance that looked and felt and even _smelled_ like blood, which had been the final straw for Roger, who by then had decided not to touch his mail again, no matter who it came from or what it was trying to bring across to him. In a haze of anger and tears, he had burned all of the letters - he knew that there was no way going to the police with them anyway, that they would probably find a way to use those threats as evidence _against_ him some way or another - and had let the mail pile up in front of his door until this exact moment.

Because right now, he was going to straighten his back, pick up the stack of paper, look for anything useful, and ritually burn anything from an anonymous sender without even looking into it. Roger stood up and carefully approached the door, where he quickly looked through the peephole first, just in case someone might have decided it was worth trying to show up at his door again. Fortunately for him, there was no one to be seen on his doorstep, allowing him to crouch down, pick up the entirety of mail he had received, and carry it to the living room. There was little space left on the table in the living room, so Roger wiped some cups and plates to the edge of the table to _make_ space. In his hurry, he did not even find the energy to hope that they wouldn’t fall off the table top and break into pieces on the floor beneath. He had broken - thrown around and smashed in pure rage or helplessness, that was - so much crockery already over the course of the last two weeks, that it didn’t even matter anymore if one more piece of it would stay intact or not.

Roger told himself he would take care of the task of finding new cups and plates and the like as soon as this whole situation had blown over. But then he remembered that he would not need to take care of new porcelain at all, given that plastic, break-resistant crockery would be taken care of for him once he was in jail. The realisation of this was enough for Roger to give up on being careful with the remainder of his service, and he simply threw the stack of mail down on the table with a lot more force than necessary, the sound of porcelain splitting into a thousand little pieces below him almost feeling like a trophy to him. It was a trophy for having given up on caring about earthly matters when the situation demanded him to direct his attention towards an upcoming legal case.

Speaking of which… there might be some sort of information letter concerning the court Brian and he would soon have to appear in - and if anything like this had been arriving, Roger was sure that it was not going to be in his or Brian’s favour, to put it lightly. Roger had not heard anything on the topic of parliament deciding on whether or not to decriminalise homosexuality on the news he sporadically had been watching to distract himself, and his hopes of their charges having been dropped had vanished like snow in the bright sunlight on an average Mediterranean summer day.

The thought of the possibility of legal documents turning up between anonymous hate letters made Roger instantly regret his decision to check his mail. But then he told himself again that he could be into even bigger problems if he ended up missing, let’s say, a mandatory meeting with someone playing a role in this whole situation either from the side of defence or prosecution, another interrogation à la officer Marks, or even the entire case going to court. With this thought in mind, Roger cleared his eyes from sleep one more time and turned to the task he had assigned himself.

The student decided to first turn to the mail of which he was sure was not going to be of any use to him to either be read carefully or to be burned ritually later that day in an attempt to make himself feel a bit stronger towards the stalkers. The first thing that he noticed was that there were many copies of newspapers, even though he was pretty damn sure he had never signed up to receive them, let alone that he was paying for a subscription of them. He pulled out a few of them, and soon found that they were copies of different newspapers that had been reporting about their arrest and the aftermath of it. To make this just a little bit clearer, the newspapers all had been turned to the page where this information was to be found, and the articles had been circled with a notable green marker that told Roger it had been the same person who had been dumping these old newspapers into his mailbox over the course of the last week.

_Very creative. Whoever had come up with this artistic masterpiece was probably studying at London Imperial because they hadn’t made it to be admitted into art school._

Roger shoved the newspapers aside with a bit of a snicker to his own internal comment to them, a snicker that unfortunately soon faded from his face when he picked up the letter that was now lying on top if the pile. It was a simple white envelope with his address scrabbled on the back side of it. The stationary was not one that he recognised, which instantly told him that it was yet another nobody wasting their time and paper and stamps on bothering him with hatefulness. Yet there was something inside of him that made his fingers itch to open the envelope to see what it held; it could be different this time, maybe people had started to calm down now that the initial shock of gay people existing had subsided, Roger thought to himself when he opened the envelope and shook out the piece of letter paper it contained…

… only to read _‘You and that other fag would go to hell if it was up to me’_ before he managed to tear his eyes away from the text, crumpled the letter and envelope up into a ball, which the tossed through the room and which landed on the spot where previously the desk of his flatmate had been standing before it had been taken away to leave a gap not only in the middle of the living room but also in Roger’s heart.

Without opening any other of the other letters, regardless of its stationary or sender or any other detail, Roger tore all of the envelopes out of the pile and flung them over to the chair next to the table, which he had just decided was going to form a repository for all he was going to set fire to later that day. The newspapers followed, along with some pieces of paper with slurs scribbled onto it that had probably been dropped into his mailbox by people that had been showing up at his house. On the table in front of him was now a smaller pile of still rather useless notifications, such as some gas and electricity bills, a reminder to go to the dentist for a biannual check-up, advertisement folders for local grocery shops and fashion stores and the like, all of which (apart from the bills) he was sure could add up to a beautiful fire later that day.

In the end, only two letters remained that he figured probably were actually important enough for him to read: the first one was from London Imperial College, and the second had the logo of the Ministry of Justice on the right corner of the envelope. Both letters made Roger rather anxious, and he would have preferred to toss them in the fire along with the rest of his discarded mail, but he decided it was time to pull himself together and face whatever kind of setbacks these letters were going to inform him about. After all, there could not be much good news they could possibly bring him at the moment; take the letter from university, for example, which he first picked up and held in hands. He was unaware of any accomplishments he had achieved lately, such as having gotten his degree or having engaged in some ground-breaking research which the university would probably officially inform and congratulate him on through mail. The only reason he could think of why they had send him a letter in the mail, was to tell him that he had been removed from the biology programme following his meeting with the principal on Monday the week before.

Roger closed his eyes when this realisation dawned on him; that it hardly could be anything other than a letter to inform him that he had been disenrolled from his studies and was not allowed to return to London Imperial, and the thought of it hit him hard. It was not even that he cared about school anymore at this point; if it were up to him, the entire institution could burn down to the ground, preferably with all of its homophobic students and staff members inside of it. It was just that disallowing him to continue his studies there on the grounds of either his altercation with the principal, his charges, or simply the fact that they did not like the thought of having a gay student walking around on the premises, would declare yet another victory for the people who had been wanting to chase him away from the place.

To make things worse, it suddenly struck Roger that it didn’t even matter whether school was willing to take him back or not. Whether the staff and his teacher would give him the ‘second chance’ at their school or were going to force him to continue his studies elsewhere (as the principle had been putting forward as an option), Roger knew he couldn’t return to London Imperial anyway. There was no way he would return to school while the weight of the trial hanging above his head was bringing him down, and after their case would have gone to court and the judge would have given them their sentence, there was no way he could continue his bachelor degree programme from fucking _jail_. Roger was entirely convinced that a prison sentence was going to be the only realistic outcome of their charges, with those pictures and the mainly false but still available testimonies of anonymous ‘eye witnesses’ he was sure were making up half of the things they had been putting forward.

Eventually deciding that it didn’t even matter what the letter said because he couldn’t return to school anyway, Roger angrily tore the envelope open and scanned over the piece of paper inside of it. Much to his surprise, however, he found that it was not telling him to fuck off and never to come back (be it in a more formal way than how he had just put it), but that the envelope contained one of these standard letters that would be send out to probably a dozen of people a week. The title stated in boldface ‘CONCERNING LONG-TERM ABSENCE FROM CLASSES’ and the rest of the text below indeed talked about how administration had picked up on the fact of how he had not confirmed his presence at either lectures or seminars. The only thing that was personal about it informative letter was that his name, his student number, and the date of sending had been penned down on the empty dotted lines reserved for this information on top of the paper; apart from that, it was nothing but a routine letter they must be sending out to people whenever they disappeared from school without informing the principal of the reason for their absence.

 _He had not been removed from the school._ This was not particularly important to Roger for the continuation of his education (as this was going to be impossible once in jail anyway), but it did feel like a minor victory towards the bullies and haters and stalkers who had not gotten what they wanted - his forced ejection.

Putting the letter back into the envelope and laying it down on the table again, Roger knew that there was only one more thing for him to do. He had to take a glance at the letter hidden in the fancy envelop from the Ministry of Justice, which undeniably would tell him yet something new about their case. He immediately felt his heart sink in at the thought of it, but tried to lift himself up by making himself think of the previous letter he had opened. He had been expecting bad news from school, but it had turned out to be alright in the end, hadn’t it?

With this thought on his mind - and uselessly trying to push away the persistent thought that he _knew_ this letter was not going to bring him good news of any sort - Roger opened the envelope with slightly shaky fingers, pulling out a just as fancy letter of which he immediately saw that the title stated ‘Announcement of date of court’.

 _Well, that was pretty straight-forward,_ Roger thought dimly while pulling out the rest of the paper. But before he even got to read the headline or the introduction of it, his eyes already wandered off to a bold-faced sentence towards the middle of the letter - which turned out to be the biggest shock of all the shocking letters he had been receiving over the course of the last week. Without even having to read the text surrounding it, he already knew that the date **’Tuesday 9 December 1967’** could apply to no other event than the day Brian and he were to appear in court, and that **’Thursday** **11 December 1967’** would be the day the judge would tell them his findings, which would then immediately be put into effect, if he remembered correctly from sociology class in high school.

And though he might have lost his track on time and pace somehow after having spent day and night inside this apartment lately, Roger did know that this proposed date was less than two weeks away.

Oh, Lord. Oh, _dear_ Lord. He had been aware of the sort of information the letter could possibly enclose, but he had _not_ been prepared for this kind of news. He had not been able to prepare himself for the thought that he was going to be officially out of freedom and possibly incarcerated in a matter of only two weeks; and now that he was aware of this information, he had no idea what to do with it. Should he tell his parents, one of whom he had ignored and one of whom had turned their back towards him the moment the police had telephoned them about the charges against him when he had been taken into custody? Should he reach out to a lawyer to help him in this process, and if, where did would he find one that would be willing to help him without fearing he’d ruin their reputation? And if he would find one, how much would it cost? Was it even going to be useful to reach out to someone who was more familiar with the penal code than he was, or was his sentence to prison a given fact regardless of whether he called in the help of a professional or not? Was Brian going to use a lawyer for this matter, or was he also too afraid, too broke, or too unmotivated to even try? Lord, what on earth was one to _do_ when finding oneself being ordered to appear in court in less than two weeks for a charge one did not agree with, but which the rest of society thought one should be locked up for for as long a sentence as possible?

There were so many questions going through his head right now, and the only answer that Roger currently had to all of them was to sleep, to sleep and hopefully never wake up again. Although he knew that this second part of his goal was unrealistic (certainly given that he had been having trouble sleeping with only the stress of the trial looming over his head, let alone with the stress this new, way too soon upcoming court date was posing on him), he still hoped he could trick his body into giving in to momentary unconsciousness, just so he didn’t have to deal with all that was haunting him.

Roger threw the court letter on top of the mail he was planning to burn at his earliest convenience - that was, as soon as he could find the power to get up from the sofa. And, on top of that, as soon as he could trust himself with a box of matches again - which at the moment did not seem to be likely to happen anywhere soon, given that he knew he would light the entire place on fire if he could. He told himself he would execute his plan of the ritual burning of the stack of either useless or hateful mail later, and for now simply curled up on the sofa, ignored the sound of mail being dropped into his mailbox at the front door, and waited for his body to give into sweet, sweet unconsciousness.

Whether he actually had fallen asleep or if he had been suffering from hallucinations - something he had found himself doing every now and then as a result of probably the lack of sleep, food, and every other basic necessity for the continuation of human life for the past week - for a while, was something Roger was afraid he would never know. What he did know, though, was that he looked up to it being around three o’clock when looking at the device above the television, and that the cause of him having woken up was a repetitive bonking noise coming from somewhere out of the building. It made his headache grow painfuller, and it annoyed him to the point of wanting to scream at the unknown source to stop, even though he had no idea whether it was a human person or an animal or a machine or God knows what causing the sound. He found his voice giving up on him however, and decided to simply clench his hands over his ears as to block out the sound as much as possible.

But then, just as he was about to do this, he suddenly knew where the sound came from: there was someone enthusiastically - or aggressively - knocking on his front door; and remembering the situation he was in, Roger figured that it was most likely to be the second adverb. He quickly propped himself up on his elbows to listen closely to the noise, and he found that he was right - especially when the sound of the doorbell was ringing through his ears on top of the knocking. Fear seemed to seize his hear and leave him unable to move, breathe, or even blink for a moment. They had found him, the people who wanted to have him removed from school, from this area, from this planet even; they were back here, back to haunt him and do God knows what with him, and there was no way to rescue himself from their hate and anger.

‘Roger? Roger, open the door!’

The sound of it made Roger freeze and bite down his bottom lip painfully hard. The voice sounded demanding; not aggressive or angry or revengeful or anything the like, but the person on the other side of his front door was making it pretty clear that they wanted him to let them in at this instance.

‘Roger, I know you’re in there!’ the voice continued, which only made Roger’s panic grow. He had to find a way out of this place. Maybe he could find a way through the window of the kitchen; he had proved himself to be quite inventive climbing through windows last week at Brian’s place, so maybe he could reverse his talent and climb out of the one at the back of his own apartment also. He knew deep down inside that there was no way to land safely jumping down on the concrete pavement below the flat from three high, but knowing he had no other way out, he decided to at least move over to the place. He shakily got up from the sofa and tiptoed over to the space behind the living room, but halfway through he was cut off by another sentence coming from the person in front of his door that shook him up - and surprisingly, not in a negative way this time.

‘It’s me, Roger, Sam! Can you please open the door?’

Sam, Sam… It took the biology student a second to remember where he had heard this name ago, but when he did in the end, he felt both shock and relief. Sam was one of Brian’s classmates, one that had shown himself to be a real friend when he had stepped up to be Brian’s and the first (and one of the only, together with the group of hippies buying Roger coffee in the canteen) open supporter of Brian’s and his relationship. And the moment he realised that Sam was the only one who could realistically inform him about Brian, he was more than happy to open the door for him.

Roger changed his direction and now carefully tiptoed his way over to the hallway. He put his hand on the door knob to open the door, but not without first checking the peephole to see if it really was Sam who had come to his house. Through the small, round glass he could see the tall statue of a young man with black hair and a pair of glasses, which indeed corresponded to what he had remembered from Sam the time he had seen him at school to ask him about Brian. In a moment of sudden determination, Roger tore the door open, pulled the unexpecting student in front of his door through the doorpost, and swung the door close again before anything or anyone else could get a glimpse of the inside of his hallway.

‘Woah, Roger! You sure are excited to see me, after all,’ Sam said while holding onto the wall of the hallway, probably having to regain his balance after literally having been swept off his feet.

‘It could be dangerous out there. People showing up and such…’ Roger said vaguely while securing the door close again, after which he turned around to his visitor. ‘How did you know my address?’

‘Remember that book I had to give back to Brian the day you asked me if I’d seen him? Turns out he had carved your address on the inside of it,’ Sam told him, but when he saw this seeming act of carelessness from his partner’s side seemed to upset Roger, he added: ‘it had no name on it, but I just knew it could be no one but you. And on top of that, the separate nouns that make up your street name had been translated into German. I never knew foreign languages were part of Brian’s linguistic repertoire,’ Sam chuckled, and though Roger realised that it was a huge comfort to know that Brian hadn’t mindlessly been throwing evidence of their relationship around, he still was not entirely at ease yet, something that Sam seemed to sense as well.

‘You probably just want to know what I’m doing here,’ Sam said in full self-awareness, and since Roger figured that he could probably handle his directness, he nodded heavily.

‘Do you have any news on Brian?’ he asked, but much to his disappointment, Sam shook his head.

‘I wish I had, but I haven’t been able to get in touch with him. His father answers the phone and I doubt if he’s received the letter I sent him when the principal told me his father had taken him out of London Imperial,’ Sam said, and though the news was sad, it was nothing that was either new or shocking to Roger now that he had seen with his own eyes how things were going at Brian’s place.

Roger sighed hopelessly to having his last remaining piece of faith of getting to know anything concerning his partner being taken again from him. He had so much hoped that Sam had shown up as some kind of guardian angel of their relationship and that the boy was going to inform him all he had to know about Brian’s whereabouts at the moment, but this once again proved to be too much to ask for. Roger felt a strong tendency to let his head hang down and make true on his earlier mental suggestion to simply escape the place by jumping through the kitchen window at third floor level, but something that Sam said made him put this plan on hold.

‘But I’ve got something better than news from Brian,’ Sam said in full excitement, and just when Roger was about to tell him there was nothing more than news on Brian that he wanted to have at this point in time, Brian’s classmate pulled a newspaper he had rolled up and put into his back pocket out of his jeans. Roger looked sceptically at him, especially when whatever was in the newspaper caused Sam to smile like an idiot while offering the papers to him.

‘I don’t think that anything in there-’

‘You haven’t heard yet, now have you?’ Sam asked, and Roger was sure that his silence was telling his interlocutor enough. ‘Read it, Roger. You’ll agree with me that this is better news than whatever I could tell you about Brian,’ he said, pushing the newspapers into his hands and tapping with his finger against at the header at it. Given that Sam directed him to the front page of the printed version of the daily morning news, Roger knew that it was something big; but that it was something that could change his life so drastically in just a second, was something he could not have expected. He clamped his hand over his mouth when he read the title of the piece, and read it again, and just once more when he still couldn’t believe the information it was trying to bring across to its readers. He looked at Sam, at the papers again, and then back at Sam, whose smile and violent nodding told him it was not a joke someone was playing on him.

‘Oh my God,’ Roger whispered, one hand still covering his mouth. ‘Oh my God, oh my God-‘

‘Read it out loud, Roger. Tell me what it says,’ Sam ordered, and for the first time ever, Roger was glad to obey to a demand.

 _‘Parliament to legalise homosexuality,’_ Roger whispered. ‘Legalise homosexuality… they’re gonna legalise homosexuality! They’re going to legalise _us_!’ Roger shouted, loudly enough for the entire floor to hear - in case anyone was home at one o’clock on this average Thursday afternoon.

Sam was still nodding violently in a form of silent reply. ‘Read the rest of the paragraph,’ he said, and Roger once again was quick to listen to him. With one hand on the sleeve of Sam’s shirt and the other clamped around the newspaper as if it was his last hope of survival (which, in all honesty, it totally was), Roger dragged the two of them over to the living room, where he first planted Sam down on the sofa before he settled onto it himself, his eyes scanning over the text.

_London, UK - During a voting following an intense all-night debate, the House of Commons has decided to accept the bill suggesting the decriminalisation of private homosexual activity between consenting adults over the age of 18… All charges currently running against suspects of homosexual acts, relationships, or contacts of any kind with other individuals that were at least eighteen years of age at the time the crime that is soon to disappear out of the penal code was committed, will be dropped. All individuals convicted on the grounds of the aforementioned crimes under the same circumstances will be released from prison or will be allowed to quit hormonal therapy on the date of December 21 of this year, when the bill will be signed by Her Majesty the Queen and put in place._

‘And?’ Sam asked when Roger put the newspaper down and looked at him with a radiant smile plastered across his face. ‘Was I right about bringing you better news than anything about Brian?’

‘You were fucking right all along,’ Roger admitted willingly, after which he threw his arms around Sam without warning the boy beforehand that he was going to embrace him with the entirety of his body. Sam, fortunately, did not seem to be shocked to find an overjoyed Roger ending up in his arms; on the contrary, he seemed to have expected it for some time, given that he simply threw his own arms around Roger’s back and allowed Roger to hold on to him for as long as the obviously both shocked and relieved student and soon to be ex-suspect in a gross indecency case needed.

‘God, this is just too good to be true…’ Roger mumbled against Sam’s shoulder, before he let go of his victim and asked: ‘When did you hear about this?’

‘On the radio this morning, just before lunch. Apparently the news had gotten out early this morning, since they debated all night and voted somewhere around five o’clock, but I hadn’t checked up on the news in the morning because I had a nine o’clock class…’ Sam rambled on about how he had gotten to hear the news for a bit more, but Roger had stopped listening when a much more important question than the whereabouts of how and at what time the news has gotten out.

‘Does Brian know?’ he asked, making Sam drop his sentence, fell quiet for a second as if he needed to process with having been interrupted, before he eventually answered to Roger, who looked like he was somewhat impatiently waiting for an answer.

‘I’m not sure. I went over to his place first, but no one was at home,’ Sam told him, but before he could add a conclusion to his findings, Roger had already jumped up from the sofa and seemed to be ready to run off towards his boyfriend’s house - which he revealed was indeed exactly his intention.

‘Great. I’ll go over there right away and tell him,’ Roger stated as he rolled up the newspaper to probably fit in into the back pocket of his jeans in the same way as how Sam had brought the letter over here, but it was the same person who had gotten him all excited about the ground-breaking news that now seemed to want to slow him down.

‘Roger, I don’t know if that’s a good idea,’ Sam said as he took the newspaper from Roger’s hands that were still trembling slightly out of excitement. ‘The article clearly says that the new law will only be put in place on the 21st next month, and until then the old law still applies.’

‘But they’re gonna legalise it anyway, and they say all current charges will be dropped!’ Roger threw back in response.

‘I know, but you have to be careful. Brian and you still have a restraining order, and if you don’t stick to it while it hasn’t been repealed, it might still be held against you,’ Sam told him. Roger oppressed the instinct to sigh in defeat; he knew Sam was right, but he had been held down so long by people and laws and institutions to allow to let anybody or anything stand in between Brian and him for even a second longer.

‘Listen, I see where you’re coming from, but Brian and me will be acquitted on the ground of these new laws. Don’t you realise what a breakthrough this it?’ Roger asked accusatorily, which he knew was unfair; Sam had been the one to have come over to him to bring him this great news, but he saw no other option to make Sam see that it was more important to him to be in touch with Brian right now than to stick to laws that soon were going to be part of a past he would love to leave behind.

‘I do. I realise,’ Sam told him, looking on but not doing anything when Roger took the newspaper back into his own hands again.

‘Brian needs to know this. And if he already knows it, I want to celebrate with him - no, not in that way,’ Roger added when Sam gave him an odd look as if he expected Roger’s definition of ‘celebrating’ to include gathering a bunch of other gay people who were overjoyed with this news and all engage in an orgy or something the like. Roger could hardly blame him for it; he had a bit of a reputation of being outgoing at school, but sexual debauchery was not something he was planning to engage in. Not as long as he was with Brian, which he hoped was going to be until the end of his days, certainly now that no laws or politics could get in their way anymore.

‘I’m sorry Sam, but I have to go to Brian, no matter at what cost,’ Roger said while making his way over to the hallway before Sam could even fully understand what was going on, let alone that he could jump up from the sofa and keep up with him. He was quite quick in going after him once it had dawned on him what was going on, Roger had to admit - while he had jumped into his shoes and thrown a coat around his shoulders, Sam was making his way into the hallway, making Roger desperate to open the door before the older student, who was at least fifteen centimetres taller and forty pounds heavier than him (God, since when had it become such a fashion for people to be physically stronger than him?), could catch up on him.

‘Roger, hold on!’ the older boy urged when Roger tore open the front door, and even though he would have preferred to just sprint away from his residence and run down the stairs, onto the street, and all the way to Brian’s house if necessary, he knew that he couldn’t do that; it would be disrespectful to the person who had travelled all the way to relieve him from his misery. Therefore, he fought hard to oppress the tendency to simply run away, and turned to face Sam to tell him calmly yet insistently what he thought about the astrophysics student’s aim to probably detain him here until the 21st of December, until they were sure nothing he did could be held against him.

‘Sam, I appreciate your concern, but there’s nothing you can say that’ll change my mind,’ Roger informed him, and to his surprise, he now found Sam nodding as if he suddenly agreed.

‘I know,’ Brian’s classmate told him. ‘It’s just that you might want to take this letter with you.’

‘What letter?’ Roger asked, and Sam fished the letter he had literally just walked straight over off the doormat, wiped the footprint off of it, and handed the white envelope with red Ministry of Justice over to the legitimate owner of the mail. _So that was the mail that had come in just before I fell asleep on the sofa,_ Roger thought to himself while staring at the envelope in Sam’s hands, waiting for him to give him an explanation of why he would want to bring this letter over to Brian’s place.

‘A rush delivery from the Ministry of Health. Now I’m not that well-informed of politics, but I have a feeling that it can only be one thing,’ Sam said with a smile on his face that was similar to the one he had been wearing when handing the newspaper over to Roger.

 _Oh, Lord, things were good and about to get even better. After a week of having received nothing but anonymous hate mails and death threats and letters from court, the universe finally seemed to be at his side again,_ Roger thought with a smile to himself while ripping open the letter a whole lot more carelessly than he would have done if it had been a letter he would have been hesitant about getting to see. Now, however, he knew that it could be nothing more than good news that would make the passing of the new bill even better than it already had been.

 _Important: Suspension of case and gross indecency charges,_ was the headliner Roger read when he pulled the top part of the letter out of the envelope. After having shown the piece of paper to Sam in a quite literal in-your-face-way, he pushed it back into its envelope without even reading the rest of it. There was no need for, after all; Roger knew it could be nothing more than an extended, explained, and perhaps even apologetic version of the headline of the letter. The title on its own was all Roger needed to confidently go over to Brian and tell him the good news; it confirmed that they were officially going to be free of charges, free to do what they wanted to do, free to live their lives together. He was free to go over to Brian’s place and talk to him, and it seemed that with the arrival of this letter, Sam was fully supportive of this intention of Roger’s as well.

‘Go tell Brian, Roger. And tell him I miss him and expect him back at school immediately!’ Sam told him before he sent Roger off on his way by pressing the letter into his hands and giving a pat on the back. With both the newly arrived letter and the newspapers in his hands right now, Roger made his way along the outside corridor of the third floor apartments, down the spiral staircases, fast enough to already be out of breath by the time he was standing on the pavement in front of the building. He gave himself a moment to both catch his breath and to come up with a plan for how he was going to travel to his boyfriend’s house, which he only now remembered was something he had not considered yet. Walking from his place close to the centre all the way to Feltham was a distance that was easily going to take an hour if he had to walk all the way. Travelling with public transport was  probably going to take even longer than walking, given how long he was going to have to wait on the several buses he was going to have to take. This left only one more option to Roger, who fumbled around in the pocket of his jacket and was relieved to find his driver’s licence in it. The only problem at the moment was that he did not have a car at his fingertips, but he knew where he could fix one to borrow for a moment, even if the owner of it would not be too happy with this.

Roger walked - running, more like - out of the street, turned to the left, and followed the road all the way towards the end of his quarters. He felt himself both relax a little now that he was out of the territory where people could possibly know him, but at the same time he felt nervous about seeing the person at whose door he was going to show up to ask - demand, to be honest - a favour from. He never would have gone towards this person if he didn’t have to, given that their major fight not even two weeks ago was making contact between the two of them rather awkward and perhaps even impossible. But he could think of no one else to turn to at the moment, and his desire to get to Brian’s house as quickly as possible was stronger than that to avoid having to see this person right now. He had a feeling the man would be home, given that Thursday used to be a day he would start his shifts at work in the evening and work all through the night - and given that these nightly shifts never had been a reason for him to sleep during the day, Roger assumed he must be awake. Also.

Finally he entered the well-known suburban street that somewhat matched Brian’s in terms of plainness and boringness, although it had not been designed as uniformly as the one Brian and his family lived in had been. This street had a bit of a wider set-up, allowing the residents to even have a small driveway next to their front door - and when he saw a car parked in front of the house he knew he had to be at, he knew his plan was going to work out. He really was not excited about getting to see the resident of the house and having to ask him for a favour right now, but he told himself it was for a good cause, took a deep breath, and proceeded his walk towards the back door of the house with as much composure as he could manage while opening the door to the house of his father.

‘Dad?’ he called out a little insecurely when he found no one around in the combined kitchen- dining room- and living room area that took up most of the space of the ground floor. ‘Dad?’ he called out again, a little louder this time, hand already reaching towards the place where he knew from experience the key was supposed to be. But then finally his father replied, and just the sound of that voice that had called out so angrily last time he had spoken to him, made him freeze for a moment.

‘Who is there?’ was the reply of his father, who slowly turned around from his position in the chair that made him face the exact opposite side of the house than the one from which Roger was coming right now. Roger decided that he might have a bigger opportunity of getting away with what he was about to do if he would move quickly, simply grab the keys and tell his father he would return his car somewhere later that day, before the man could get up and prevent him from taking his vehicle towards the other side of town. His father might have been cruel to him lately, but they were still father and son after all - he was not going to turn his own son in for borrowing his car, now was he?

‘Dad! Dad, I’m going to have to borrow your car for a moment,’ Roger informed his father as he fished the car key off the hook next to the back door, where he knew his father always kept it. Sticking to his plan of going in and out of his father’s house before the man could even protest against him showing up at his place, he did not intend to stay even a second longer than necessary - especially after his father had made it pretty clear to him the moment he had been reaching out to him after having returned home from the police station that his presence would not be appreciated in his house as long as he did not want to admit he had been breaking the law - and this was exactly what his father reminded him of before Roger could manage to disappear out of the door again.

‘What are you doing here?’ his father said as he tossed the book he had been reading aside and stood up from his chair in the living room, walking towards the dining area where Roger was currently standing with the keys to his car in his hands. ‘I thought I told you not to come over here as long as you didn’t want to see that what you’ve done was a crime-’

‘They’re no longer going to be crimes, dad. Read up on your newspaper, switch on the TV, the radio, or whatever you like. Our charges are going to be dropped and I’m gonna have to tell Brian!’ Roger said as a last goodbye before he walked out of the door again. He hoped his father was not going to follow him, but perhaps this was a bit too much to ask on an already marvellous day like this. He could not go from the must miserable person on earth to the happiest one all of the sudden, Roger told himself when his father followed him outside and towards the car of which Roger had already unlocked the door by the time his father made it to the driveway.

‘Tell Brian… Have you gone out of your mind? You two have a restraining order!’ his father shouted loudly enough to make two female passers-by look up in both confusion and shock.

‘Not anymore!’ Roger replied just as loudly when he jumped into the car, tossing the letter and the newspaper on the passenger’s seat and started the engine before his father could even come up with a reply to prevent him from leaving in his car.

‘What on _earth_ are you talking about?! Get the hell out of my car, I need it for work tonight!’ his father protested, but Roger was hardly listening to him; he didn’t even mind facing his father while he spoke, as he was too busy readjusting the rear view mirror.

‘Go inside and read the news, dad! I’ll bring your car back before you’ll have to leave for work!’ Roger promised him, before he shifted the gear stick, put his foot un the accelerator, and drove away from the driveway, leaving his paralysed father behind on the street.

When after having checked the rear view mirror a handful of times, Roger was confident enough to believe that his father was not going to run after him like some kind of old fool chasing after children for having walked through his backyard in their quest for the football they had kicked over the hedge (which he had to admit he had a lot of experience with after this had happened time after time back when he was still a child). His seemed to have stuck to his own driveway, maybe had been putting a foot down on the pavement, before disappearing inside again. certainly allowed Roger to relax a little now that he knew his father wouldn’t be going after him to demand his car back; all he had to do now was hope he could still find his way to Feltham, and then there would be nothing that could prevent him from seeing Brian again.

Remembering the way to this particular city district was harder than expected, however. He was not exactly good at remembering routes and finding his way to the destinations he wanted to reach; but luckily, when he scanned his eyes through his father’s car, Roger found an expandable map of London in the glove compartment of his dad’s car. He drove one more street after this pleasant discovery just to be sure his father wasn’t going to be able to see his car and hunt him down, before he parked the car at the side of yet another suburban street and unfolded the map in his lap. It took a bit of time and puzzling, but after a few minutes, Roger was pretty sure he had figured out where he currently was and how he could find his way to Feltham within twenty minutes, if traffic was not going to be too much of a drag. Luckily for him, though, it was not even half past one yet, and he managed to drive his way through most of the streets and roads without too much difficulty. The only thing was that was making it hard for him to get to his destination were his own nerves, which caused his fingers to clench themselves tighter around the steering wheel every minute they approached Brian’s city district a little closer than before.

And eventually, after what turned out to indeed be about fifteen minutes, Roger found himself driving through a labyrinth of similar looking streets in Feltham, where he decided to look for the map on the board that had helped him find his way to Brian’s house last week and which hopefully could help him out this time also. After a bit of driving around he eventually spotted it at the side of a road, and once he did, he didn’t even need to look at it anymore; just having seen it was enough for him to remember where to go to reach his destination. He drove through the suburban streets at a harder speed than probably was allowed, and brought his speed up even more when he entered the street he needed to be at. He parked the car across the house his lover resided at, grabbed the newspaper and the letter he had taken with him as evidence for the information he was going to share with Brian - if he was not aware of the news yet - and he stepped out of the car. He crossed the street without looking first - both because he knew there was no one around to drive him over in the early afternoon in a suburban street like this, and because he did not want to waste his time on useless actions such as looking out for traffic when all he wanted was to ring the door of his partner’s house, deal with whoever was going to prevent him from trying to see Brian, and tell him what he wanted to tell him. Another time another place he might have been afraid of what would happen if Brian’s father was at home and was to stand face to face with him (given that the last time they had met had _not_ exactly ended up being a cosy, friendly get-together). But this time he found Roger did not _care_ about what Harold would say or do if he saw him walking up to their house; he had come here with a mission, which was not to find himself in a fight with Harold again, but to talk to his son now that they were allowed to do so again, and share the good news with him.

His plans turned out to go a little different than he had intended for them to go, though; just when he stepped off the street and onto the pavement in front of the house, someone appeared from the garage of the house, and Roger could immediately tell by both the physique and mostly by the displeased look on his face that it could be no one but Harold. _Boy, I sure seem to have run out of luck after the good news I received this morning,_ Roger thought to himself as the man walked towards him; and Roger, not wanting to give in to the threatening atmosphere hanging around Harold, walked in the direction of Brian’s father as to show him he was not afraid of him this time.

Soon they were standing in front of each other with just enough space between them to make sure neither of them could slap the other - not _yet_ , that was. The tension in the air between them was tangible, but Roger was determined not to let it show, and instead waited for Harold to speak first.

‘I thought I was pretty _damn_ clear when I told you not to show your face here again,’ Harold gritted, and Roger nodded, more to himself than to his rival. They were starting off calmly. So far so good.

‘You were perfectly clear,’ Roger replied. ‘It’s just elected to ignore your threats,’ he said, making it sound as if Harold threatening him had never left any kind of impression on him. The truth was that it sure had, but this was not the moment to admit that, of course. Now he had to stay strong, no matter what Harold was going to say or do next.

‘That was a bad choice. I told you to stay away from my house and my son,’ Harold said darkly, his hands curling up in fists next to his suit that looked way too fancy for a day spent in and around the house, but Roger instead used his reminder as a way to reveal his intentions of having shown up here again despite better judgement.

‘Your son, yes. He’s the one I’ve come to speak to,’ Roger said, having to oppress a snicker when Harold gave him a look as if he had just gotten out of his mind.

‘ _Speak_ to him?!’ Harold spat out. ‘I don’t want you anywhere near my son, and especially not with the restraining order-’

 _Oh God, if I hear the word ‘restraining order’ one more time, I’m going to commit a serious capital crime, one that won’t be repelled from the penal code anywhere soon,_ Roger thought to himself, before he interrupted Harold mid-sentence.

‘You can’t hit me with the restraining order argument anymore, Harold. It’s not intact any longer,’ Roger said bittersweetly, and he watched as Harold’s angry face seemed to cool down for a bit - out of momentary surprise, that was, because Roger was sure that he would become even angrier when he found out that the restraining order indeed would no longer apply to his son and Roger.

‘What do you mean…?’ Harold indeed asked with a touch of both surprise and aggressiveness in his voice, which made Roger all too happy to reply to him with an answer he was most _definitely_ not going to be satisfied with.

‘You obviously haven’t checked the news this morning,’ Roger said, before he pulled out the newspaper he had been holding all the while. Pushing the bundle of papers into the hands of the man standing in front of him, Roger crossed his arms over his chest and waited with a smug smile for the reply Harold would give to such a defeat to his ‘standards’.

‘Parliament to legalise homosexuality… What in the _name_ of the Lord?!’ Harold said, his sentence starting softly when he read the title of the main article out loud, and ending rather loudly when he spat out the last sentence in a way that made his words sound more like a profanity than like an actual attempt to ask God what was going on on planet earth. ‘You’ve got to be kidding! This has to be fake, some kind of blatant lie, or… or publicity stunt! This can’t be true!’

‘Its source is the official government press through The Times. I’d say it’s pretty reliable,’ Roger commented. ‘And on top of that… I already received a letter from the Ministry of Justice concerning the ‘’suspension of my charges and case’’ this morning. Have you already looked inside your mailbox yet? Roger asked as he dangled the letter in front of Harold’s eyes, yet far enough to make sure the by now furious man could not grab it and tear it into a million pieces. Not that a torn letter would change the fact that Brian and he were going to be acquitted before they even would be dragged into court; it was just that Roger still needed this letter to show Roger, who he expected was just as uninformed about the topic as his father seemed to be, and to afterwards hang it above the door to the living room as some kind of trophy, for having defeated the hate and prejudice against them.

‘Unbelievable!’ Harold shouted, this time loudly enough to draw the attention of another resident of the house, who now came out of the garage also. It was Brian mother, dressed equally decently while carrying a bag of what seemed to be garbage out of the garage, putting it down next to the side building of their house, and walked into the direction of the two men.

‘Harold, what’s going on… and what’s he doing here?’ Ruth asked, her eyes widening in surprise and mainly fear when she saw him. She was probably afraid his presence was going to lead to another fist fight between her husband and him, but Roger could assure her that this was not going to happen - not if it was up to him, that was. He was coming in peace to bring good news, and he wanted to make this clear to Brian’s mother before her husband could say anything negative about him or his showing up at their house to his wife.

‘Hello Ruth. I was just showing your husband the morning newspapers,’ Roger said once the still somewhat fragile looking woman had made her way up to them and was standing next to her husband as if his presence would prevent her from being infected by ‘the homosexual virus’ or God knew what these people were afraid of.

‘The news?’ she asked, and although her husband seemed displeased about it, he did hand the papers over to his wife for her to read the news he was so displeased and Roger go overjoyed about.

‘Homosexuality to be legalised…’ she summarised the article in a few words after quickly having read through it, before looking at her husband with a look of both surprise and excitement on her face - mainly the last of these emotions surprised Roger. According to Brian, his mother had been unable to do anything apart from crying station his ‘undesirable’ sexuality and the charges against him since he had gotten back to the police cell, so Roger had not expected to find a look of relief and happiness on her face - until he remembered that she might not be happy about the fact that homosexuality was going to be legalised, but that her son would not be prosecuted and that both his and her family’s reputation would not be ruined by this whole situation after all.

Roger understood what she was excited about, but her own husband seemed harder to convince that this new bill was going to work out great for them. Harold, do you know what that means?’

‘It means debauchery and immorality all around! How can you possibly be excited about this?!’ Harold said accusingly to his wife, who however remained happy with the new bill.

‘Because it means Brian’s charges will be dropped! That’s all we have been wishing for, right? Because we know he never meant to engage into any of these acts!’ she cried out. This last sentence was not exactly what Roger had been hoping for, but then again, he definitely preferred Ruth’s careful optimism over her husband’s continuing grumbling about it being ‘inappropriate’ and ‘unfitting’ for a ‘civilised country like the one they lived in to legalise such gross behaviour.

Deciding to leave both of his boyfriend’s parents behind him and let them decide what to do with the news themselves, Roger said: ‘And speaking of Brian… if you don’t mind, I would like to inform him of this news myself.’ He was already on his way to the front door of the house, but this journey of course would not have been complete if Harold would not have tried to prevent Roger from getting in touch with his son, this time by roughly pulling at his upper arm and forcing him to turn around and look into his furious face again.

‘Don’t you dare!’ he spat out at him. ‘Even if this… this _nonsense_ turns out to be true, it doesn’t change a thing about how I think about Brian and you being together or whatever you call it!’

‘Frankly, Harold, I don’t give a _fuck_ about what you think of us being together, as we indeed call it. You can do just as little to stop us from being together as the court can from now off,’ Roger told him, and his rough and demanding tone seemed to make Harold back off a little, just enough for him to pull away from his painfully tight grip around his upper arm. This was not enough for Roger, though; he would not leave Harold be before having given his ego another smack. ‘And if you ask me, I think it’s about time Brian finds out what his rights are going to be from now off.’

‘Don’t you dare,’ Harold repeated, this time in a low and threatening voice that, unfortunately for the man, did not manage to leave an impression on Roger anymore.

‘Why? Because he can only know what you want him to know? Because you decide what he can and cannot do, and not the national law?’ Roger challenged him provocatively, seeing Harold chew on the inside of his cheek to keep himself from screaming - or worse. ‘He will find out within now and, let’s say, a day or so,’ Roger said in a now much calmer and collected voice, which seemed to hit Harold all the more, especially when he added a painful but true: ‘You’re fighting a losing battle.’

Harold gritted and have Roger a cold look, but his wife was able to reply before he could.

‘He’s right, Harold. Brian will find out sooner or later,’ Ruth told him softly, as if not to disturb or shock him so much by the fact that she was technically agreeing with the boy they all knew Harold wouldn’t want to agree with even if Roger was to put forward that two and two made four.

‘Maybe, but not right now, and _certainly_ not through Roger!’ Harold yelled in protest.

‘Because you can’t stand it if things plan out differently than you had planned for them to go, right?’ Roger said teasingly, knowing he was probably pushing it right but also not really caring about this; he was on top of the world at the moment, and nothing this narrow-minded man standing before him could say or do could bring him down any longer.

‘Shut up! Who on earth do you think you are, showing up at this place and directing people around as if you own them as if you can just decide who gets to hear or say or do what!’

‘That is exactly what you do, mister May, but you’re so blind you don’t even see it,’ Roger told him, which was the last thing Harold needed to hear to _really_ start shouting. It was an ugly, incoherent mess about how Roger had no respect for him and his family, how he had ruined his son’s life and how he deserved to be in jail. The only good that came from it, was that the noise of Harold’s monologue eventually draw Brian to the front door to see what on earth was going on outside.

Since Roger was facing the direction of the street, he was not the first to see Brian opening the door and step outside; in fact, he was the last of the three people quarrelling in the garden to detect his presence, and only after Harold directed his fury from him to his son.

‘Brian! Get the hell inside, right now!’ Harold cut off his own monologue mid-sentence to shout at his son, and Roger was quick to spin around and look at the direction of the front door. And indeed, there he was, the boy Roger had been thinking and dreaming about day and night over the course of the last two weeks; Brian, standing in the doorway, looking a bit dazed and confused by the sudden outburst of anger going on in his front yard, but his expression cleared up when he detected his boyfriend among the fighting people.

‘Brian…’ Roger whispered way to softly for anyone around him to hear, let alone the boy he was addressing himself. It didn’t matter, though; Brian seemed to know exactly what he was saying, and by the movement of his lips that curled up into a careful but oh so meaningful smile, Roger could tell that he was whispering his name back at him.

The peaceful moment was unfortunately - but not unexpectedly - ruined by Brian’s father, who apparently still believed he could put a halt to this meeting and prevent his son from ever finding out about the new bills that were going to legalise homosexuality and set Brian and Roger free from all charges currently running against them.

‘Brian, are you deaf? I told you to get inside!’ he screamed at his son, who unfortunately for him did not seem to have any intentions to listen to his father’s demands. Instead, Brian turned to his boyfriend and looked at him expectantly, as if to let Roger decide what he was to do. Roger had seen this before, and it suddenly hit him that it had been the last time he had shown up at his house; when Brian hadn’t known whether to stay or to leave like his father wanted him to when he had walked in on his father attacking Roger, he had waited for Roger to tell him if he wanted him to help him out or go away. That time Roger had given him permission to leave and save himself from troubles right away, but this time he needed Brian to stay here.

‘No, stay this time, Brian. I’ve got something to tell you,’ Roger said while moving away from Brian’s parents and making his way towards the front door. This caused Harold to break out in shouting again, but to Roger it sounded like some kind of annoying back ground noise compared to Brian’s voice that was soft, sweet, and careful as always - even though what he started with was something Roger hated to hear all the time.

‘But the restraining order-

 _God, that bloody restraining order again…_ Roger could totally understand why Brian brought it up in the presence of his parents, but he could not even wait for Brian to finish his sentence to tell him that they did not have to stick to their restraining order anymore, so he chose to interrupt him instead.‘-Is gone. Do you remember when I told you parliament was going to discuss-’

‘Roger!’ Harold interrupted him from the background. From the corners of his eyes, Roger could see that the man was planning to run up to them and probably push Brian inside the house and work him to the ground once again, but surprisingly enough it was his wife who prevented him from moving into the direction of the two boys.

‘Let him be, Harold. Our son has been acquitted, that’s all that matters right now-’

‘All that matters? Does that mean we can just sink back into immorality again? I know you’re against this, Ruth! Our son, engaging in this kind of debauchery!’ Harold cried out angrily.

‘Parliament? Acquitted? What is going on…’ Brian asked, sounding terribly confused about the seemingly random discussion that was going on before his eyes. His glance rested between Roger and his mother, the latter of which almost made Roger drop to the floor in surprise when she gave him permission to go ahead by a careful but nevertheless very brave (given that this was exactly the opposite of what her husband wanted): ‘Tell him, Roger.’

And for the first time ever, Roger was happy to listen to one of Brian’s parents.

‘Remember when I told you about parliament going to discuss the legalisation of homosexuality?’ Roger said, loudly enough to overpower the rage of Harold that seemed to continue even now that neither of the two people he tried to reach out for listened to him anymore. ‘Well they did, and…’

‘That can’t be,’ Brian whispered, shaking his head as if he knew what amazing news was about to come but was unable to hear it yet, unable to believe that they were finally going to be released from the hate and pain and fear they had been pulled through.

‘They legalised it,’ Roger finished his sentence with more than a bit of a contented smile.

‘That can’t be. You can’t be serious,’ Brian said, as if he needed to test if Roger was pulling some kind of joke on him or if he was speaking the truth, even though Roger knew that Brian was aware of the fact that he would never pull off such a cruel joke on the one he loved most.

‘I am serious. Your father still had the newspapers telling the news, but I have better proof than that,’ Roger said as he pulled out the letter Sam had urged for him to take with him out of the back pocket of his jeans. ‘I got this from the Ministry of Justice this morning,’ he said, handing the letter over to Brian - who he, in contrast to whose father, did trust with the letter that felt nearly sacred to him. Brian seemed to feel this vibe hanging around the envelope also, and was most careful to open it and pull out the paper that first had redeemed Roger, and which now seemed to be doing the same to Brian as he scanned over the text with eyes filling with tears.

‘You’ve been acquitted,’ Brian whispered once he had made his way through the text, and Roger nodded with a smile.

‘And not just me. You’ll be acquitted too, and so will the rest of our people. Justice is finally here on our side,’ he whispered, bringing his hand up to wipe a falling tear from Brian’s cheek. ‘Speaking of which… I think your justice might actually just have arrived,’ Roger said when the sound of a delivery van stopping close by caught his ears. He turned around and walked towards the vehicle from the royal mail service, ignoring Harold’s apparently endless rage. Really, had he not been having such despicable ideas, Roger would have advised him to go into politics, where people might actually listen to his speeches.

A middle aged woman in black uniform stepped out of the van, carrying a letter that obviously could not be anything else than the one that was going to inform Brian he was going to be a free man again. ‘Good afternoon,’ she said to the person walking up to her while checking for the sender of the letter she was holding. ‘A rush delivery from…’

‘The Ministry of Justice for mister Brian May,’ Roger effortlessly finished her sentence while picking up the letter in a fashion he hoped would not have come across to the woman as too impatient or anything the like. ‘Amazing timing, keep up the good work!’ Roger said to an obviously confused mail lady before he made his way back to Brian to deliver the letter to the one it belonged to. Brian was almost too nervous to take it from his hands, let alone open it; but with a bit of encouragement from Roger, he was able to rip open the envelope and read the announcement inside of it with eyes once again edged with tears.

‘Oh my Lord, it’s true. It’s actually true, they’re actually going to let go of us,’ Brian said, after which he had to clamp a hand over his mouth that was all Roger needed to see to realise he was not going to be able to prevent himself from crying for much longer. And Roger could hardly blame him for this; to have the tension and fear they had been going through the last couple of weeks being taken away all of the sudden by one simple notification having shown up in the mail,  brought along a lot of feelings, ranging from euphoria to fear and from angriness to relief, all of which seemed to become a bit too much for Brian, who by now softly had started crying, helplessly wiping away the tears that were falling from his eyes.

‘Oh, darling…’ Roger said while throwing his arms around his partner, ignoring the shouts from whose father that this action earned him - to him, after all, there was nothing more than Brian in the world at this moment. ‘I know it’s a shock, but we should be happy most of all,’ he whispered to a softly sobbing Brian.

‘I’m so happy that I don’t know what to do with it, ‘Brian sniffed. ‘A-and at the same time I’m nervous be-because what will we do now? My parents still don’t approve of us, and especially my dad-’

‘I know,’ Roger hushed. ‘I know, but he’ll get around. You just need some time away from him so he can calmly work on finding his common sense back. If he ever had any.’

This at last seemed to make Brian laugh a little, although the tears were still threatening to continue falling from his eyes. ‘But where do I go? I have school to go to, I can’t just move away.’

This ‘problem’, however, was one Roger could easily fix for him - way easier than fixing his father’s attitude, that in any case. ‘I know exactly where you’re gonna go,’ Roger said with a wide smile on his face. ‘You’re gonna come and move in with me.’

This answer seemed to come as a shock to Brian, if Roger interpreted the expression on his face correctly; and not because he didn’t want to, but probably because he had not expected to go from almost being imprisoned for seeing each other to moving in together. ‘Move in with… with you?’ he asked as to make sure he had heard his correctly, but there was a sparkle of excitement in his voice that told Roger that he was not going to face a lot of difficulty trying to win him over.

‘My roommate had to leave when his family found out he was living together with a homosexual,’ Roger explained with a roll of his eyes and while bringing up his hands, which seemed to bring a bit of a smile to Brian’s face. ‘So there’s room for someone else to move in, and I’d love for that to be you.’

Brian, still smiling that cute but insecure smile on his face, said: ‘I mean, I’d love to, but my parents…’

‘You can literally just come with me and move in tonight, if you’d like. Everything is already there, apart from the furniture in the bedroom that used to be my roommate’s. But I’ve got a queen-size bed, and I doubt if we’re going to need a second bedroom…’ Roger grinned, and Brian joined him meaningfully. ‘And the desk in the living room is gone. My last roommate took that with him,’ Roger said somewhat apologetically on behalf of his ex-roommate.

‘I have a desk. The one I make homework on and wrote letters to you on. Maybe my parents’ll let me take it with me when I leave,’ Brian said, and though he sounded unsure of this last assumption about getting to take his desk with him, he had spoken the words ‘when I leave’ indeed as an ‘when’,  and not as an ‘if’, confirming to Roger that he was gladly taking his offer of coming with him. 

‘Amazing,’ Roger said, entangling his fingers with Brian’s, before he remembered something he yet had to say. ‘And speaking of school, by the way, you’re coming back to Imperial College with me. It’s the order of both me and Sam, who came over to my place to bring me this news.’

‘Sam, from my class? How did he know where you live?’ Brian asked in confusion.

‘Said he couldn’t find you or anyone else here this morning, so he decided to go to me. He found my address written in German in a astrophysics book of some sort that you had given to him to borrow.’

‘I can explain both,’ Brian said firmly, as if he was afraid Roger was going to leave him after all this time if he would turn out to be unable to explain why he had translated Roger’s street name into German or why he hadn’t been home that morning. ‘Writing in German was to prevent people from finding out about us if someone ever was to find that book, and we weren’t home this morning because my parents dragged me over to meet with a lawyer for in court.’

‘So that’s why you’re all looking funny,’ Roger said, giving a tug at the sleeve of Brian’s somewhat oversized jacket that was totally unlike anything his boyfriend would normally wear.

‘Don’t tell my mom that, she spend all evening yesterday to iron this crease into our trousers,’ Brian said with a bit of a nod towards his mother, who still seemed to be in somewhat of an argument with her husband about what to do with the situation going on at their doorstep. Roger could hear in her tone that she was not too happy about him having shown up at their house, and certainly not about them being allowed to be together from now off - but the excitement of their charges having been dropped seemed to make her allow the two of them to have a moment between them, which Roger was grateful for. It was far from an ideal situation where both their parents would support them, but it was a start, certainly when compared to a still raging Harold standing next to her.

‘In that case it’s rather a shame your father just kicked against the mailbox out of angriness,’ Roger said after having observed the pair of them for a little while.

‘He’ll get by. I hope,’ Brian said with no more than a tinge of confidence, which Roger decided was something he was going to need to jump onto.

‘I’m sure he will. It might not look like it at the moment, but you’re his only son, and he loves you a lot. He’ll get by,’ Roger said determinedly, but as the two of them looked on for a little while longer to find Harold giving the mail box another kick and shouting at his wife for allowing this to happen, doubt about him ‘getting by’ anywhere soon started to sink in, and Roger was the first to reply to this thought he knew for a fact both of them were having at the sight of Brian’s disgruntled father.

‘And if not… then I’ll always be here for you whenever you need me. I’ll never make a point out of your homosexuality,’ the biology student said with a smug smile on his face.

Now it was Brian’s turn to roll his eyes. ‘Why thanks, that means a lot to me, smartass.’

‘I’m glad to hear my intelligence and open-mindedness is being appreciated here,’ Roger said, which pulled a smile from Brian’s face. Just the sight of it was enough to melt Roger’s heart - he had missed the image of Brian smiling so much over the course of the last weeks they had been forced to spent apart, but the knowledge that there was going to be a lot to see Brian smiling about from now off, might make up for this lack, Roger told himself.

‘Let me show you how much it’s appreciated,’ Brian whispered as he leant forwards to Roger, but just as Roger closed his eyes and was about to feel Brian’s lips on his, they were interrupted by the one who did not seem to be able to just let them be for a single second.

‘Don’t you dare go there!’ Harold shouted, and when four angry and annoyed eyes were facing his direction, he waved the newspaper in the air and said in full conviction: ‘The article clearly says ‘homosexual acts in private’, so that you don’t bother anyone with your filthy business and all!’

Roger found that Brian and he turned to each other as to decide who was going to have to react to this nonsensical objection - and in the end, it turned out that he was the first one to serve Harold with the perfectly sarcastic reply that he deserved.

‘Oh, so you _can_ read, after all! I didn’t know you had it in you!’ Roger shouted back at the man, whose face seemed to grow even redder with anger than it had been before - especially now that his own son laughed at the joke made at his expense. Not that either of them cared about Harold’s indignation anymore; not now that they were standing next to each other with the fingers of one hand intertwined and the letters declaring their freedom held in their opposite hand, feeling more united than they perhaps ever had felt before. And being united was exactly what they needed to be right now; after all, the upcoming time was going to be hard for them. Just because politicians had finally gotten to the conclusion that it was about time gay people were allowed to live their lives, did not mean that the rest of the country would also update their opinion on the topic - and Brian’s father was the living proof of that. Harold might be the prototype for the anti-gay people that they were inevitably going to be meeting, but there was little these people could do to them now that the gross indecency laws no longer included the so-called ‘homosexual activities’ - and especially now that they were going to be standing against these narrow-minded fools together.

‘Well, I’m glad that ‘homosexuality in private’ is easy enough to achieve, in that case,’ Roger said, looking at Brian with a sparkle of naughtiness glistering in his eyes - exactly matching the look on Brian’s face when it turned out that Brian knew exactly what he was talking about. Before Roger could even reach out himself, Brian had already placed his hand on the doorknob and pulled it close, shutting his parents out from joy, relief, happiness, and excitement that would reduce the time they had been separated from each other into nothing more than just a bad memory that could vanish into the background the more their relationship was going to develop from now on.


End file.
